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ARTHUR W. ROBINSON, B.D. 

VICAR OF ALLHALLOWS BARKING 
BY THE TOWER 



THE PERSONAL LIFE OF 
THE CLERGY 



THE PERSONAL LIFE 
OF THE CLERGY 



BY 

ARTHUR W. ROBINSON, B.D. 

VICAR OF ALLH ALLOWS BARKING BY THB TOWER 
EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF WAKEFIELD 



NEW IMPRESSION 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 






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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 



PAGE 



Importance of the subject. The secret of Influence : 

what it is not^ and what it is . . 1 

Note 1. — Archbishop Benson on ' Spiritual Power * . 15 

kA Note 2. — Bishop Paget on the ' Secret of Power' . 17 



CHAPTER II 

Our part and duty in the matter. ^ Force is not an 
attribute of God/ We must co-operate. In 
what sense Grace does not make life easier . 19 

Note, — '^An easy lesson hard to learn ' . . .30 



CHAPTER III 

The first necessity. Penitence. ^The great want 
in modern life.' Some of the causes which 
have been at work. Need of teaching : and 
of example. The Priest must be the Penitent 32 

Note, — From the Private Devotions of Bishop 

Andrewes 54 



vi Contents 

CHAPTER IV 

PAOB 

A further necessity. The difficulty of Prayer. Not 
obvious why we should pray. Our ground 
of certainty. Practical conclusions . . 67 

Note, — William Law s description of Ournnius . 77 

CHAPTER V 

The final necessity. Devotion to our Lord. How 
it is quickened and sustained. Provision for 
the knowledge of Christ. Why ^we have 
goodness but lack character ' ... 83 

Note 1. — The Imitatio Christi in modern life . .101 
Note 2. — Extract from a Sermon by Charles Marriott 103 



CHAPTER VI 

A danger. Secularisation. The widened conception 
of the Mission of the Church : and of the 
work of the Clergy. The gain and possible 
loss. Our Lord and the social question. The 
clergyman in society. ^In the world' but 
^ not of ' it 104 

Note 1. — Dean Church on the work of the Clergy . 128 
Note 2, — Professor Harnack on the ^Progress of 

Civilisation ' . . . . » . . 129 



Contents vii 

CHAPTER VII 

PAGE 

Another danger. Over -occupation. Spiritual 
fatigue *the most impressive characteristic' of 
our generation. Parable of the Sower. The 
activity which is due to indolence. Doing 
more by doing less 130 

Note, — Professor Seeley on ' the ambition of becom- 
ing distinguished for activity' . . . .144 



CHAPTER VIII 

A third danger. Depression. All sadness not 
necessarily un-Christian. Symptoms of the 
evil. Causes and precautions . . . 145 

Note, — F, W. Robertson on Elijah's despondency . 159 
POSTSCBIPT . . , . . . .161 



WE HAVE GOOD HOPE . . . THAT YOU 
HAVE CLEARLY DETERMINED, BY GOD'S 
GRACE, TO GIVE YOURSELVES WHOLLY 
TO THIS OFFICE, WHEREUNTO IT HATH 
PLEASED GOD TO CALL YOU : SO THAT, 
AS MUCH AS LIETH IN YOU, YOU WILL 
APPLY YOURSELVES WHOLLY TO THIS 
ONE THING, AND DRAW ALL YOUR CARES 
AND STUDIES THIS WAY. 

The Ordering of Priests, 



CHAPTER I 
IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT 

This volume is intended to be preparatory. 
The aim of the series is to do something, if 
it may, to promote the efBciency of clerical 
work. It will seek to do this by presenting 
such results of the experience of the past as 
are likely to be of service in stimulating and 
guiding to fresh endeavours of thought and of 
enterprise. Experts will be asked to sum up 
shortly and suggestively what they think it 
most necessary to say in regard to the studies 
and practical problems which especially concern 
the clergy at the present time. 

There is no doubt that assistance of this kind 
will be welcomed by many. Never were the 
demands upon us more incessant and severe than 
they are now; never was there more need for 
such direction as will help towards a greater 
clearness of judgment and a more profitable 
expenditure of energy. It cannot but be of real 

A 



2 Personal Life 

value that we should be told by those who are 
able to tell us how we may best keep ourselves 
in touch with the theological, philosophical, 
historical, or scientific knowledge which is being 
accumulated so abundantly by students in all 
these departments; and how too we may deal 
most satisfactorily with the questions which 
crowd in upon us in connection with what is 
commonly understood as practical work — ques- 
tions educational and missionary and social; 
questions as to schools and services and preach- 
ing and visiting and guilds and clubs and 
finance. 

There is, however, one condition upon which 
this usefulness must depend. These aids will 
be of value to us — does it seem paradoxical to 
say it ? — only if we realise that they ought not 
to be allowed to hold the first place in our con- 
sideration. If we are to make a true beginning 
in our attempts to increase the efficiency of our 
work, we must not iegin with them. Hence 
it has been decided that the opening volume 
of the series must be devoted to an inquiry 
of a wholly different kind. 

It may be well that we should spend a short 
time in justifying this decision, not indeed by 



Its Importance 3 

arguments of an abstract character, but by 
looking at the matter in the practical light in 
which it is likely to make the most lively im- 
pression upon us. 

We are so constituted as naturally to wish 
for success. The wish is a right and a noble 
one. It may, of course, like other right and 
noble things, be sadly perverted and degraded. 
It may sink into a vulgar desire for any sort 
of approbation, or for the even less creditable 
satisfaction which too often accompanies material 
reward. But in its essential nature, and as 
originally implanted, it is by no means so poor 
a thing. Rather is it to be likened to the 
longing for completeness and the yearning after 
perfection which haunt and possess the soul of 
the artist; may we not go even further and 
affirm that it is akin to the delight which the 
supreme Creator takes in His work, and to His 
determination that what He has made shall be 
' very good "^ ? 

We wish to succeed. We have our ideals of 
what a lecture, a sermon, a congregation, or a 
parish should be ; and we cannot easily rest until 
we have attained to something like the realisa- 



4 Personal Life 

tion of our dream. We should not be better 
workmen, nor should we be better men, were 
it othermse with us. 

We wish to succeed, and accordingly, when 
we see what looks like success in the work of 
another, we are greatly attracted by it, and are 
fired by the ambition to go and do what he has 
done. We too would sway the multitude, would 
secure the confidence of classes of people whom 
it is specially hard to win, would gather about 
us a body of devout communicants and earnest, 
intelligent workers. We too would make a last- 
ing impression for good upon the souls that are 
committed to our charge. 

Alas ! we know but too well that motives far 
short of the highest may enter into such an 
ambition ; yet, nevertheless, the desire in itself — 
let us say it again — is a lawful and honourable 
one. It is the wish to make full proof of our 
ministry, to be workmen who have no need to 
be ashamed, to be in a position to present with- 
out blemish ' the beautiful flock ' which the 
Chief Shepherd will one day require at our 
hands. He Himself, when speaking of the way 
in which His own earthly life had 'glorified' 
the Father who sent Him, knew the satisfaction 



Its Importance 5 

of saying — ' I have finished the work which Thou 
gavest Me to do." 

We have said that the sight of success is a 
thing that greatly attracts us. It is indeed 
pathetic to observe how those who appear to 
have achieved it are watched and questioned by 
their fellows who, as often as not, are much older 
men than themselves. What was it did it? 
where was the source of attractiveness ? was there 
anything special in the methods employed ? was 
it this ? or was it that ? 

Even more pathetic is it to witness the 
attempts which are made to imitate the efforts 
and to reproduce the effects of others. For the 
most part, it goes almost without saying, they are 
made in vain. There is of course much, very 
much, to be learned from any one who has really 
succeeded in anything ; but the learning must go 
far deeper than surface imitation. This is where 
so many lamentably fail. They set themselves to 
reproduce externals, plans and schemes ; or possibly 
no more than manners, which at secondhand in- 
evitably pass into mannerisms. Then, too, it is 
essential that we should keep in mind the ele- 
mentary principle that no two of us were ever 
intended to be exactly alike; so that even were 



6 Personal Life 

we to succeed in our endeavours to fashion our- 
selves after the pattern of somebody else, it could 
only be by the forfeiture of what was distinctive 
in ourselves, and as such a needed contribution to 
the life around us. 

What, then, is the secret of influence? If it 
does not, as we have been saying, consist in a 
copying of what is most noticeable in the lives 
and practices of others, still less does it depend 
upon external conditions of station or wealth. 
Material resources may even be detrimental where 
it is a question of exerting the influence which 
is to do most for the upraising of men. It is 
recorded that Innocent IV. and Thomas Aquinas 
were standing together as the bags of treasure 
were being carried in through the gates of the 
Lateran. ' You see,' observed the Pope with a 
smile, ^the day is past when the Church could 
say, " Silver and gold have I none '"'!'' ' Yes, 
Holy Father,' was the saint's reply, ' and the 
day is past also when the Church could say 
to the lame man, " Rise and walk " ! ' 

It is natural to imagine that intellectual 
gifts count for a great deal in the matter of 
such influence. Beyond question they do ; and 



Its Importance 7 

yet it is even more certain that they are 
not the chief factor, not even an indispensable 
factor. The most able and learned have not 
seldom been those who have most conspicuously 
failed. 

Again, there can be no doubt that methods of 
organisation may be made extremely effective. 
Yet it is often only too evident that these in 
themselves have a tendency to become fatally 
mechanical, until a condition of things may easily 
be reached in which the apparatus of machinery 
is kept going rather for its own sake than for 
any particular good that is expected to result 
from it. 

But there is one illusion from which we find it 
most difficult of all to part. With our practical 
English temperament, we are always disposed to 
the belief that anything, or nearly anything, is to 
be accomplished by means of hard work. We 
are extremely slow to learn that, Work is not 
necessarily influence. Were it otherwise, this 
country of ours would be vastly more Christian 
than it is. At no time in its history was there 
more doing than at present. To go into a ' well- 
worked ' parish, with its unceasing round of ser- 
vices, its multiplied agencies, its endless activities, 



8 Personal Life 

is to a visitor fairly bewildering. As we turn the 
pages of the Church's ' Year Book ' and read the 
records of meetings and societies, conferences and 
committees, involving perpetual discussions and 
hurryings to and fro, we almost marvel that in 
this little island we can still hear ourselves speak ! 
Small wonder that from all sides there comes the 
complaint that the hours of the working day are 
too few, and that there is ' no time ' to read, or to 
think, or to pray. 

It is not meant to suggest that all these 
activities are fruitless, very far from it. All 
that is deprecated is the supposition — should 
we not rather say, the superstition? — that work 
is its own justification, and that simply to have 
got through so much of it is in itself a cause 
for congratulation. On the contrary, never did 
earnest workers need more than now to be 
brought face to face with the fact that it is 
possible to 'labour in vain,' to 'spend their 
strength for nought,' to toil day and night 
and yet take little or nothing. 

The lesson of the true secret of influence, if 
we have learned it, was probably brought home 
to us in some such way as this. We had tried 



Its Importance 9 

our experiments; we had gone on trying them 
for years. We had acted upon one plan after 
another, had adopted enthusiastically this sug- 
gestion and that, had spurred ourselves to con- 
stantly increasing efforts. And then, when the 
consciousness was deepening that we were as far 
from the secret as ever, it pleased God of His 
goodness, and He could scarcely have granted a 
greater boon, to send our way some simple soul 
whose every word seemed to tell, whose very 
presence carried a benediction ; who, without 
our ability it may be, and with no special 
methods, evidently succeeded where we had 
most elaborately failed. The sight sent us to 
our knees to ask to be forgiven, and taught the 
way to begin from the very beginning again. 
What we had learnt was this. We had been 
made to realise that influence is the power that 
distils from a life that is lived in communion 
with God. 

Shortly before his death, the late Lord Sel- 
borne paid a visit to Wales and addressed a 
gathering of churchmen there. It was at a 
time of much uncertainty, when many were 
anxiously wondering how the position of the 



10 Personal Life 

Church in the principality was to be upheld. 
The speaker said a great deal that was wise, but 
there was one counsel which more than any other 
fixed itself in the memories of his hearers. ' Be 
spiritual ' — he urged — ' be spiritual, be spiritual.** 
That was the advice upon which he insisted most 
earnestly ; and never in all his life did the great 
lawyer give truer counsel than that. 

Thought and work are, after all, only the 
outcome and expression of life. It is by the 
quality of the life which underlies them that 
their character and worth is determined. Intel- 
lect is good, as an instrument is good ; but 
intellect by itself is powerless. Organisation is 
good, but only on the condition that, as in the 
prophet's vision, there are not merely ' wheels,' 
but also *the Spirit within the wheels.' It is 
not what we say, not even what we do, but 
what we are, that tells. ^Do not speak to 
me,' said the American transcendentalist, with 
a pardonable exaggeration ; ' what you are 
thunders so loud that I cannot hear what you 
say!' 

It would not be difficult to multiply illustra- 
tions and instances to show that to-day as of 
old ' the life is the light of men.' 



Its Importance 11 

A Mission was being conducted in a pit village 
of the county of Durham. The schoolmaster of 
the place was a hard-headed north countryman ; 
and it might have seemed that he was inclined 
to be somewhat hard-hearted too. At any rate, 
he had no great belief in Missions, and did not 
think much of emotional religion. He was ex- 
tremely reserved about the whole matter. But 
there was one topic upon which he was always 
ready to talk. Speak to him of a man who 
five-and-twenty years before had been the vicar 
of the district, and at once a chord was set 
vibrating within him. Asked one day whether 
he thought that his old vicar, who had become 
famous in the Church, was still the same humble 
and genuine man that he had been in the days 
when he had known him first, he replied at once 
in tones that were almost indignant; ^Why,' 
he said, ' you have only to shake that man'*s hand 
to feel that he is full of the Holy Ghost!' He 
could not have explained it, but he could quite 
well recognise the fact. 

Not indeed that it has always been necessary 
to shake a man's hand before coming to a similar 
conclusion. The Archbishop of York told his 
Ordination candidates a year or two ago of a 



12 Personal Life 

young clergyman who had been appointed to a 
country parish. His stay in it, as it proved, was 
not to be for long. He was scarcely more than 
thirty when he died. After an interval had 
passed, a friend who had known him well visited 
the place, eager to discover what kind of im- 
pression he had made. Meeting a labourer, he 

asked him the question, ' Did he think Mr. 

had done any good .? ' Again there was no sort 
of hesitation in the answer, ' I never saw that 
man cross the common yonder, sir, without 
being the better for it.' 

Does it seem too high, too impossible an 
aim, that the people should be the better for 
the simple fact of our presence among them, 
and that even our slightest actions should 
speak to them of good ? Can we really be 
satisfied with any conception of our mission 
and responsibility less than that ? Is not the 
life of the priest intended to be a sort of 
sacrament to his people ? Should they not be 
able to see in it 'an outward and visible sign 
of an inward and spiritual grace,' a ^pledge' 
which will assure them of the reality of that 
which is beyond merely natural powers, and a 



Its Importance 13 

^means' whereby they are to be encouraged 
and helped to attain it? 

Whether we think so or not, men do take 
knowledge of us. They are well able to per- 
ceive it when we are in a low state of spiritual 
vitality, and they seldom fail to be aware of 
the fact when the inner life of their teachers is 
healthy and strong. 

Are we then saying too much when we say, 
and say decidedly, that the consideration of the 
Personal Life of the Clergy must of necessity 
be set in the forefront of any attempts to 
increase the efficiency of clerical work; and 
that all other considerations must be regarded 
as subordinate to this one ? 

The treatment of such a subject is a matter 
of peculiar delicacy and difficulty. In many 
ways what is to be said will fall, perhaps must 
inevitably fall, far short of what both writer 
and readers could wish. It is, however, per- 
missible to believe that it will not be without 
its use if it should have the effect of con- 
vincing any one of us of the necessity of going 
into the whole question much more thoroughly 
for himself. It certainly will not be in vain, 



14 Personal Life 

if it should lead us to cast ourselves more 
humbly upon that higher wisdom which is ever 
most ready to help us just at the point at which 
we have honestly tried, and failed, to help one 
another. 



Note I 

The following passages occur in an address by 
Archbishop Benson, on ' Spiritual Power,' which 
formed part of his Third Visitation Charge : — ^ 

"If we look to Scripture we find the word 
' Power "" used almost indiscriminately in the Au- 
thorised Version to render two very different 
words, ^E^ovaia^ ^authority' (externally conferred 
power), and Avva^i^ ' potency,** ' ability ' to which 
our usage of ' power "^ more properly belongs. 

" Both ought to co-exist in the Church. Our 
Lord taught and worked with ' authority "* as 
well as with ' power,"* and the Apostles received 
^ power "* as well as ' authority,"* and the Christian 
clerus ought to have both. But they may be 
separated in the Church. The Scribes and 
Pharisees ' knew not the power of God,"* but they 
still ' sate in Moses** seat "* and their ' authority ' 
was to be attended to. In the Church of Israel 
when the priesthood ceased, the prophets had 
^ power"* but no levitical ^authority.** 

"And so history shows how in sinful times 
'power' has departed from 'authority"* and has 

^ See Fishers of Merit pp. 110 ff. 
16 



16 Note 

reappeared in enthusiasms, in separations, in alien- 
ated communities not to be reunited till their 
crisis comes. And fearlessly we must say that 
terrible as is the putting asunder of what God 
hath joined together, yet ^ power' without 
' authority ' is a more living thing, a more saving 
thing, than ' authority ' without power. . . . 

"What so hollow as for authority to have 
to vindicate itself conscious of departed power ? 
But alas ! the man feels it must be done, and 
so does an institution. . . . Thus, failing the 
power, a working substitute for it is provided. 
The authority remains, it must act ; if its inner 
force flags a little it must be propped up. There 
is no original intention to deceive : rather to 
keep up the standard when the heart sank. 
Gradually the service of religion is mechanised, 
and even then it is so soothing and so fair, as 
it gently becomes more material and sensuous, 
that it is delighted in. It is even a kind of 
conscientiousness which searches for working sub- 
stitutes when the acquisition and exercise of that 
real spiritual power which lies in the awful con- 
tact with Christ's holiness and judgment is too 
painful and constant.'' 



Note II 

Speaking to those engaged in teaching at the 
universities and in public schools. Bishop Paget 
has said : — 

" ' For their sakes I consecrate myself/ There 
is the ultimate secret of power ; the one sure way 
of doing good in our generation. We cannot 
anticipate or analyse the power of a pure and 
holy life ; but there can be no doubt about its 
reality, and there seems no limit to its range. 
We can only' know in part the laws and forces of 
the spiritual world; and it may be that every 
soul that is purified and given up to God and to 
His work releases or awakens energies of which 
we have no suspicion — energies viewless as the 
wind ; but we can be sure of the result, and we 
may have glimpses sometimes of the process. 

" Surely, there is no power in the world so un- 
erring or so irrepressible as the power of personal 
holiness. All else at times goes wrong, blunders, 
loses proportion, falls disastrously short of its 
aim, grows stiff or one-sided, or out of date — 
'whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; 
whether there be tongues, they shall cease; 

B 



18 Note 

whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish 
away**; but nothing mars or misleads the in- 
fluence that issues from a pure and humble and 
unselfish character. 

" A man'^s gifts may lack opportunity, his 
efforts may be misunderstood and resisted; but 
the spiritual power of a consecrated will needs no 
opportunity, and can enter where the doors are 
shut. By no fault of a man's own, his gifts may 
suggest to some the thoughts of criticism, com- 
parison, competition ; his self-consecration can do 
no harm in this way. Of gifts, some are best for 
long distances, some for objects close at hand or 
in direct contact ; but personal holiness, deter- 
mining, refining, characterising everything that 
a man says and does, will tell alike on those he 
may not know even by name, and on those who 
see him in the constant intimacy of his home."" 
— The Hallowing of Work^ pp. 16 f. 



CHAPTER II 

OUR PART AND DUTY IN THE MATTER 

In what is to be written in these pages no 
apology will be offered for simplicity of style 
or directness of statement. Things will be said 
with which we are all of us perfectly familiar, 
and which we are constantly saying to others. 
The fact that they are thus familiar and often 
on our lips is not a reason for omitting them 
here; it is rather a reason why we should be 
asked to consider them the more carefully, and 
apply them to ourselves. 

It is no mere paradox to assert that we all 
of us, clergy and lay-people alike, most need to 
learn the things which we have known the longest. 
And who is likely to urge them upon us of the 
clergy, if we do not urge them on ourselves? 
It may encourage us to remember how freshly 
familiar truths can appear when we bring our- 
selves to view them from the standpoint of our 
particular needs and hopes. No things after all 

19 



20 Personal lAfe 

are really so ' new ' as the things which are both 
'new and old.' 

In this chapter we shall consider, and try 
to lay to heart, a most elementary lesson. So 
elementary is it that we are in serious danger 
of neglecting it altogether. The lesson is this, 
that, what we are to be must in great measure 
depend upon the efforts we are prepared to make. 
If we are to become more spiritual men, it can 
only be because we are firmly determined that 
it shall be so. 

We cannot assert this principle with too much 
emphasis, nor can we make too sure of the founda- 
tion upon which the assertion rests. 

To begin with, let us dismiss the fear that 
there is any inconsistency between what we 
shall now say and what has been said already. 
In the preceding chapter we had occasion to 
maintain very strongly that failure must in- 
evitably result when 'work' is made a substitute 
for the influence which can only flow from 
spirituality of life. It might therefore at first 
sight look as if we were now going to restore 
the thought of work to the position of primary 
importance from which we had hitherto been 



Our Duty 21 

trying to dislodge it. But indeed it is not so. 
There is no sort of inconsistency in saying, on 
the one hand, that effort is no substitute for 
grace; and on the other, that grace demands 
from us the most untiring co-operation of effort. 

If we are teaching rightly, we are perpetually 
insisting upon both these truths. We tell our 
hearers that the duties to which they are pledged 
by their Christian profession are such as they 
cannot hope to perform in their own strength, 
and that they must be continually dependent 
upon a higher power. At the same time we 
tell them that this power can never be theirs 
against their will; that God''s help is in fact 
only given to those who will help themselves. 

It is no small part of our message to make 
men see that it is ever God's way to treat them 
with respect. Wonderful as it is. He asks our 
leave to bless us. As we do not think of entering 
the dwelling of another until we have obtained 
his permission, even so the heavenly visitor says 
of Himself, ^I stand at the door and knock.' 
Everything must depend upon our readiness to 
allow the Divine power to have free course in 
our hearts and lives. 



22 Personal Life 

That, then, which we teach to others we must 
also teach ourselves. It may help to make the 
lesson real to us if we reflect how thoroughly of 
a piece are God's dealings with the whole of His 
creation, so far as we have knowledge of them. 

In an early Christian document, the so-called 
Epistle to Diognetus^ there is a memorable sen- 
tence which deserves to be written in letters of 
gold — ' Force is not an attribute of God.' ^ A 
little consideration is enough to enable us to see 
how universal the application of this great law 
of liberty is. 

The supreme distinction between ourselves and 
the creatures beneath us lies in the fact that, 
whereas they obey involuntarily, without any 
clear consciousness of what obedience means, the 
service expected from us is a service of deliberate 
choice. 

If thou would' st attain thy highest, go look on a flower ; 
What it does will-lessly, do thou willingly. ^ 

The flower is for ever doing; opening its petals 
to welcome the influences of heaven, gathering 
through roots and leaves the elements which con- 
tribute to its upbuilding, yielding always to the 

^ § 7. jSia 7ap ov Trpdaea-Ti Tip Qeif. 
2 Schiller, 



Our Duty 23 

laws of its being. Even so, in like manner, is it 
for the man to strive and mount upwards towards 
the fulfilment of his ideal. 

True it is that in God ' we live and move and 
have our being,' and that without Him we ' can 
do nothing.'' The new birth is His act. Chris- 
tian character is His creation. All its beauty, 
all its fragrance, are a witness to His presence in 
the soul. Yet it is not less true that Christian 
character is the result of human endeavour. The 
Christian is not only born but made. It is our 
part, our necessary part, to ^work out' that 
which God is working in us. It is for us to 
' labour striving according to His working which 
worketh in us mightily.' 

God, we believe, never enforces; but He is 
ever waiting to enable. ^ Force is not an attri- 
bute of God ' ; but, ' Twice I have also heard the 
same, that power belongeth unto God.'^ And 
God's power becomes ours as we accept and 
obey it. 

That progress in the spiritual life has been 
made to depend upon our efforts appears even 
more convincingly to be part of the great order 
1 Ps. Ixii. 11. 



24 Personal Life 

under which we live, when we pass from the 
merely physical sphere to the intellectual, and 
take our illustrations from facts and experiences 
connected with mental proficiency which no one 
would think of disputing. In this connection, 
as it may be well to be reminded, we are con- 
stantly employing expressions which we have 
borrowed, in the sense in which we employ them, 
from religion. We speak, that is to say, of 
'gifts,' and of Halents,' and of 'endowments,' 
which belong to us, if they are ours at all, as 
part of our heritage. We have powers and 
faculties which we did not originate in ourselves. 
But the recognition of this fact does not lead 
us to imagine that we have no responsibility in 
regard to them. We know quite well that we 
must cultivate them diligently, if they are to 
avail us anything. Otherwise the failure will 
be great in proportion to the opportunity. 

Gifts do not relieve their possessors from the 
necessity of hard work. 'Genius,' in the oft- 
quoted definition, 'is an infinite capacity for 
taking pains.' It is the merest delusion to sup- 
pose that anything really great has ever been 
achieved without effort. True no doubt it is 
in a sense that 'every man does his best thing 



Our Duty 25 

easiest ' ; but unremitting has been the toil which 
has gained for him the facility. And the result, 
when it comes, is rightly described as a ' work ' 
of genius. 

Those who have had the best right to speak 
have been unanimous in their testimony that 
nothing really worthy of attainment, in art, or 
in literature, or in science, is to be reached with- 
out labour — continuous, systematic labour. True 
again it is in a most real sense that the ' yoke is 
easy' and the 'burden is light,' for the task is 
congenial and the reward is not wanting; but 
the stoop of the back and the furrows on the 
brow make it evident that there is a yoke to be 
carried and a burden to be borne. 

When some one inquired of Sir Joshua Reynolds 
how long it had taken him to paint a certain 
picture, he answered, ' All my life.' 

' If I omit one day's practice,' so Rubinstein is 
reported to have said, ' I know it the next day, 
the critics know it the day after, and the public 
the day after that.' 

When Dr Liddon was asked to give some 
lectures to younger men about preaching, he 
refused, declaring that he 'could only tell them 
to take pains.' 



26 Personal Life 

^If the scholar feels reproach when he reads 
the tale of the extreme toil and endurance of the 
Arctic explorer, he is not working as he should.*'^ 



If then it be true that, 



The heights by great men gained and kept^ 
Were not attained by sudden flight ; 

But they while their companions slept. 
Were toiling upwards through the night, 

how is it to be supposed that it can be other- 
wise with great saints? If it takes years of 
practice to perfect a musician, how much practice 
must it not take to perfect a Christian? Will 
eight hours a day do it ? Nay, those who have 
longed the most to attain proficiency in the 
highest art of holy living have not been content 
with so little. Their prayer has been that every 
moment of conscious, and indeed of half conscious 
existence, might be devoted to the task. They 
have desired that even in their dreams they might 
be nearer and still nearer to heaven. Of one, who 
was remarkable for self-control and a singular 
sweetness of disposition, it was said that he 
' took infinite pains with himself.' 

Yet it is by no means uncommon to hear 
^ Emerson in Concord, p. 219, 



Our Duty 27 

language which is calculated to leave the impres- 
sion that all that is required in order to produce 
the highest type of Christian excellence is a fuller 
operation of Divine grace. There is a sense in 
which this is undeniably true; but it may be 
most dangerously false if what is intended is that 
there is no immediate need for any action of our 
own. Let us not be deceived by what may 
appear to be good words. They may not be the 
less misleading because they assume a look of 
humility. Let us not presume to cast the blame 
of our own shortcomings upon God. If He is 
straitened, we may be sure that it is not in Him- 
self, but in us. He gives grace freely ; but it 
cannot be given where it is certain that it will be 
received in vain. 

Shall we say then that grace is 'an infinite 
capacity for taking pains "^ ? St Paul would not 
have quarrelled with that definition. Indeed it 
seems to underlie his own confession, when he 
says: 'By the grace of God I am what I am; 
and His grace which was bestowed upon me was 
not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly 
than they all.''^ 

1 1 Cor. XV. 10. 



28 Personal Life 

Might we not go a step further, and say what 
may seem an even bolder thing ? Might we not 
dare to assert that a gift of more grace would 
not make life easier for us, but harder ? The 
presence of genius, as we have seen, does not absolve 
men from the necessity of toil. Nay rather, it is 
this very presence which more than anything else 
binds and pledges them to spend laborious days ; 
which assigns them to the task of surmounting 
the most formidable difficulties. Even so, it 
would appear, does the presence of grace pledge 
us to labour upon labour. 'For this very 
cause' we are bound to give all diligence that 
we may add virtue to virtue in our endeavour 
to ' press toward the mark for the prize of the 
high calling,' and to ^apprehend' that for which 
we were ' apprehended of Christ Jesus.' ^ 

If we are to grow in grace, then, let us be 
assured that we have our part to do. If we are 
to receive the 'more life and fuller,' we must 
open our hearts to welcome and bend our wills 
to obey. If we desire a place in the ' kingdom,' 
we must prepare to hear the challenge, ' Can ye 
drink of the cup ? ' ' Can ye be baptized with the 
1 2 Pet. i. 6 ; Phil. iii. 12, 14. 



Our Duty 29 

baptism?' If we long to exercise influence for 
the blessing of others, we must be ready to 
sanctify ourselves for their sakes, and must not 
count it strange that in the process there is much 
to endure. 

Happy for us if the lesson has been learned 
at the outset of our ministerial life. A young 
clergyman had called to see Bishop Benson at 
Truro. At the close of the interview, the bishop 
passed across the table a sheet of paper on which 
he had written the concluding sentence of the 
first book of the Imitatio : 'Tantum proficies, 
quantum tibi ipsi vim intuleris.' Take that for 
your motto, he said. 

Let us settle it in our minds, whether early or 
late, that if we are not advancing in spirituality 
of life, the fault is to be sought within. We can 
only make progress as we bring pressure to bear 
upon ourselves. It is ' through faith and patience ' 
— ^ faith,' which gratefully traces all good gifts 
to their source in God, and ' patience,' which as 
gladly accepts and bravely fulfils the conditions 
upon which we can use them with profit — that 
we, like those before us, may hope to ' inherit the 
promises.' 



Note 

It is strange how slow we are to lay hold of some 
of the most elementary principles of spiritual life. 
Nothing, for example, seems to many of us to be 
harder to grasp than the fact of the utility of 
effort when rightly made in harmony with the 
Divine intention. We make efforts, right efforts, 
and they appear to fail ; our good resolutions 
come, as we imagine, to nothing. Then we lose 
heart, and are inclined to abandon endeavour. 
It is, we say, ' no use trying.** The insufficiency 
of such reasoning we should see without difficulty 
if we were to put an analogous case in the 
sphere of more ordinary education. A child, 
let us say, has been practising a music lesson. 
He has worked hard, but when the master 
comes, the result is absolute failure. The 
child is discouraged and perplexed, and declares 
that he will try no more. Accordingly for the 
next lesson he makes no preparation, but never- 
theless he does remarkably well. And now his 
conclusion is triumphant : ' When I tried the 
hardest I did the worst ; and when I didn't try 
at all I got on best "" ! For us the child's logic 

30 



Note 31 

serves but to raise a smile. We see, of course, 
that the final success was due to the previous 
work. At the moment the work did not tell, 
probably on account of excitement or self-con- 
sciousness which upset the nervous balance ; but 
in the end the eifect became apparent. 

Is it not a similar conclusion that we ought 
to draw for ourselves when we have tried most, 
prayed most, struggled most, and seem to have 
overcome the least ? It may really have been so, 
for the moment ; but we may not think that, on 
that account, the effort expended has been labour 
lost. There is such a thing as the conservation 
of spiritual energy. The result will most certainly 
appear, perhaps when we are entirely unconscious 
of the cause to which it is to be traced. No 
effort, no aspiration, no genuine attempt at self- 
discipline, is ever thrown away. ' In due season 
we shall reap, if we faint not.** 

' My brethren,' said Richard Baxter at the 
close of a sermon, ^I have given you an easy 
lesson, hard to learn.'' There are in religion 
many easy lessons hard to learn. This is one of 
them ; we shall have others to note as we proceed. 



CHAPTER III 

NEED OF PENITENCE 

Once we have firmly laid hold of the thought that 
it is essential to our progress that we should use 
all diligence in order that the grace which is given 
to us may not be received in vain, it becomes our 
wisdom to go on to ask how in particular we 
are to set about the task of self-discipline. No 
acceptance of general principles, however true, 
can be enough for our purpose ; indeed, as we 
must be aware, general resolutions do not as a 
rule lead to much. What then, we must inquire, 
are the directions in which we are especially 
bound to put forth endeavour ? Where is it that 
we are likely to be weakest and most at fault ? 
The answers to these questions may well differ 
for different men, as they must certainly differ 
for different times. All we can attempt is to 
indicate what will be the true answers for many 
of us, possibly for most of us, at the present 
time. 

32 



Penitence 33 

Those who, by their work as Missioners or 
Conductors of Retreats, are brought into closest 
relations with the personal experience of their 
fellows, would probably not hesitate long if called 
upon to say what they believed to be the greatest 
need in the religious life of to-day. They would 
say that it is the need for a deeper Penitence. 

Nor would this testimony be confined to the 
clergy. Some of us may remember an article 
which appeared in one of the magazines a few 
years since from the pen of Mr Gladstone, in 
which he dealt with certain theological difficulties 
then much discussed in connection with a widely 
circulated work of fiction. The most remarkable 
thing in that article was the assertion of the 
writer's conviction that the great majority of all 
such difficulties have their origin in an inadequate 
sense of sin. 

In a conversation with a friend, reported in 
print soon after his death, the same great Church 
layman went even further and 'declared most 
deliberately that in his opinion this absence of a 
due sense of sin was ' the great want in modern 
life.' ' " Ah,*" said he slowly, " the sense of sin — 
that is the great want in modern life ; it is want- 
ing in our sermons, wanting everywhere ! '' This 





34 Personal Life 

was said slowly and reflectively, almost like a 
monologue."* ^ 

Perhaps the most effective way of making our- 
selves realise the extent of the need is to contrast 
the condition of things familiar to us now with 
the state of religious teaching and feeling in days 
not very far removed in the past. 

We are accustomed to set over against each 
other the main characteristics of the Evangelical 
and Tractarian schools of religious thought. We 
find no difficulty in describing the differences 
which distinguished the one from the other — 
differences of standpoint, of aim, and of method. 
It might be wished that we were equally accus- 

■^ Talks with Mr Gladstone, by Hon. L. A. Tollemache, 
p. 96. Compare also the words of Amiel, with reference 
to modern philosophies : * The cardinal question is that of 
sin * (Journal, Eng. Tr., p. 5). As evidence that the defect 
is being widely recognised in many directions, it is signifi- 
cant to find a statement like the following in a recently 
published work on the social situation : — ' The beginning of 
social amelioration is in the recognition of that personal 
responsibility which the Bible does not hesitate to call sin. 
. . . For a very large part of social disorder, the chief re- 
sponsibility lies in the passions and ambitions of individual 
men, and no social arrangement can guarantee social welfare 
unless there is brought home to vast numbers of individuals 
a pro founder sense of personal sin.* — F. G. Peabody, /gsws 
Christ and the Social Question, p. 116. 



Penitence 35 

tomed to take note of the points which, in spite 
of these differences, they firmly maintained in 
common. Among such agreements we shall 
find that none was more marked than the entire 
unanimity with which the teachers of both 
schools insisted upon the absolute necessity of 
a true appreciation of the nature and guilt of 
sin. The language in which the teaching was 
conveyed might dififer, but the meaning and 
intention were the same. 

The Evangelicals were determined that none 
who came under their influence should be left 
in any doubt about the matter. They in- 
structed their converts at the outset as to the 
need for repentance. They never wearied of 
speaking about ' conviction "* of sin, and the 
' burden ' of sin, and the ' corruption ' of 
human nature, and its ' fallen condition ' in the 
sight of a holy God. And these were much 
more than phrases to them : they were stern 
and tremendous realities. Their meaning had 
been learnt by actual and painful experiences. 
These were the subject of their sermons and 
of their hymns. We have the confidential re- 
cords of them in their letters, and in the diaries 
which they blotted with their tears. 



36 Personal Life 

Nor was it otherwise with the teachers of the 
opposite school, unless indeed it might be main- 
tained that these were even more precise and 
systematic in their dealings with the matter. 
What they aimed at perpetually was to ' deepen 
penitence/ to lead to a truer ' contrition.' 
They spared no effort, and they shrank from no 
process of personal humiliation. Self-examina- 
tion with them was raised into a science. They 
scrutinised motives as under a microscope, and 
by a particular ' confession,** not merely of sin 
but of sins, they sought to lead themselves and 
their penitents to an ever-increasing apprehension 
of their need of pardon and grace. 

The essential conviction was one and the 
same with them both ; indeed, at times the very 
language in which it was expressed was identical. 
Passages from the writings of Simeon and of 
Pusey have been set side by side in a recent 
biography ; and so much alike are they that it 
would not be possible, from internal evidence 
alone, to tell from which they had come.^ 

From such a retrospect we turn our eyes to 
religion as we know it now. We mark its 
1 See Liddon's Life of Pusey, vol. iii. pp. 96, 98. 



Penitence 37 

activities, its ever widening range of social in- 
terests, its larger outlook upon historical and 
scientific inquiry, its more accurate exegesis. 
There is so much that is useful and good. We 
are thankful for the advance that has been 
made in so many directions. And yet, if it be 
true that we are losing our penitence, there is 
need to pause and consider. What if it should 
prove that the foundations upon which we are 
building are insecurely laid ? And what if the 
building itself be of less consequence than we 
have been inclined to suppose ? 

Those who went before us did go deep, and 
they did train saints. The fruit of their work 
was to be seen in men and women who were 
humble and unworldly in their aims, who 
genuinely cared for souls, who took delight in 
their religion, and made the reality of it felt 
in their lives. And it is impossible not to 
connect these effects with the profound self- 
knowledge, the trembling sense of personal un- 
worthiness, which teachers and taught alike 
earnestly declared to have been at the basis of 
them. If we have changed all that, we have need 
to reflect very seriously both as to our present 
condition and our future prospects. 



38 Personal Life 

Perhaps the best hope for us lies in the fact 
that we are for the most part quite ready to 
admit that there has been this change, perplexed 
though we may be to know how to account for 
it, or to deal with the situation to which it has 
given rise. 

This certainly is not the place in which to 
attempt anything like a complete investigation 
into the influences which have been at work 
to lessen for us the sense of the seriousness of 
sin. It must be enough if, by way of suggestion, 
we can indicate some of the chief of them. 

The most evident has been the force of re- 
action. There was a sternness, we might even 
say a severity, about the older teaching and its 
ways. Truths were set forth in statements 
which were repellent to many minds. At the 
same time the outward arrangements of worship 
were too often slovenly and dull. The recoil 
from this state of things led to a determination 
to make religion attractive at almost any cost. 
The winning aspects of it were to be continually 
presented. On all sides it was insisted that 
services should be ' bright ' : until not a few of 
us have grown heartily tired of the word, and 



Penitence 39 

would gladly restore somewhat of the old 
solemnity and wholesome restraint. 

But of course we shall have to go deeper 
than this if we are to discover the fundamental 
causes of the change of which we are thinking. 
When we do penetrate beneath the surface we 
quickly find ourselves in the presence of a 
cause which is as fundamental as any could be. 
This is nothing less radical than an entirely 
altered conception of the character of God as 
shewn in His relations with men. 

To the teachers who preceded us the dominant 
conception of theology was, without question, 
that of the Moral Government of God. They 
took the thought from those who had gone before 
them. We recall the phrase as occurring per- 
petually in the writings of Bishop Butler.^ The 
idea was uppermost in the minds of most of those 
who thought seriously in the century that followed 
him, whether they were philosophers, or divines, 
or evangelists. They all made that conception 
the starting-point of their thinking, and they 
never allowed themselves to lose sight of it. 
The Divine attributes upon which they dwelt 

^ It is related of this great bishop that in his last solemn 
moments he * expressed it as an awful thing to appear before 
the Moral Governor of the world.' 



40 Personal Life 

and insisted were such as were most directly 
connected with it. They spoke much of justice, 
and will, and power to administer punishment. 
To them the true human attitude was an atti- 
tude of submission and obedience. All else was 
revolt, such as would inevitably draw upon itself 
the penalties of a broken law. To these thinkers 
it was therefore natural to give great prominence 
to the prospect of judgment, and to the dis- 
grace and guilt of sin. 

We have but to bring before our minds such 
an outline of the religious position, as it existed 
at a time well within living memory, in order 
to heighten our consciousness of the extraordi- 
nary revolution that has occurred in our modern 
theological thinking. 

There may be exaggeration in the story as 
it is sometimes told, how a statesman, having 
been struck by a phrase as it fell from the lips 
of a preacher, repeated it during the course of a 
speech in his place in the House of Commons, 
only to discover that others were as ready to 
grasp at it as he himself had been. The phrase 
was — 'the Fatherhood of God.** What is cer- 
tain is that the truth when it came seemed new. 
To most it was a surprise: to many it was a 



Penitence 41 

revelation. It rapidly passed from lip to lip, 
it found its way into books, it took possession 
of hearts. Men believed it passionately. They 
came prepared to listen to those, and to those 
only, who would develope it for them. Their 
English reverence for the sanctities of the home 
made them ready to receive it. They found it 
in the Gospels. They saw that it underlay the 
great prayer of their childhood. Before long 
the demand became general for a theology which 
should be entirely expressed in the terms of this 
single truth. 

Now we need not hesitate for an instant to 
express our deep thankfulness for all that we 
have gained in the course of this transition. 
We could scarcely over-estimate the debt that 
we owe to those through whom it has been 
effected. We have such cause to be grateful as 
men have for sunshine and summer heat. There 
has come to multitudes a fresh unveiling of light 
and love. Never in the history of Christendom 
were more people more intelligently able to 
pronounce the first great sentence of the Creed 
— ^I believe in God the Father Almighty.' A 
wholly new significance has been given to the 
message of the Incarnation of the Son; fresh 



42 Personal Life 

and unlocked for help has been found by many 
who, under the older teaching, had been sorely 
perplexed by the doctrine of Christian Regene- 
ration. And we might easily lengthen our list 
of such benefits. 

At the same time it requires little effort to 
enable us to see that so marked a change of 
standpoint would be likely to make a very real 
difference to the consideration of such subjects 
as the certainty of judgment and the sinfulness 
of sin. 

Nor is it diificult to understand how, as time 
went on and the new ideas more completely took 
the place of the old, the effect upon the popular 
religion would become increasingly noticeable. 
As an exclusive insistence upon the 'Moral 
Government' had produced a sternness and 
asperity from which the religious instinct in 
men might rightly welcome relief; so, too, an 
exclusive insistence upon the ' Fatherhood ** would 
tend to produce results which in their turn might 
prove to be even more unsatisfactory. Father- 
liness dissociated from firmness may for a while 
be attractive as a doctrine, but it can only lead 
to a laxity alike of thought and of practice. 
Happily, in the long run, it must cease to be 



Penitence 43 

popular, because it must cease to be believable. 
Love is never more terribly wronged and de- 
graded than when represented as merely good- 
nature. Such a travesty can retain no lasting 
hold on mind, or heart, or conscience. 

We are so much accustomed to dwell upon 
the gains which modern theology has owed to 
modern science, that we are probably inclined 
to overlook the fact that there have been some 
very real, even if only temporary, losses as well. 
Thus, for example, it will scarcely be questioned 
that the scientific doctrine of evolution, greatly 
as it has aided us in attaining to a more intel- 
ligent appreciation of the history of the training 
of the race, and greatly as it has strengthened 
the foundation upon which we rest our hopes 
for the future, has also done not a little to 
weaken the general sense of the seriousness of 
sin, by seeming to encourage the notion that 
evil may after all be but a stage, and a neces- 
sary stage, in the development of good ; a notion 
from which it is easy to pass on to the denial 
that we can have any real responsibility in the 
matter. 

So also, for our generation at all events, the 



44 Personal Life 

gain from the influence of science upon religious 
thought has been seriously counterbalanced by a 
widespread weakening of the meaning of Law. 
The word is on all lips; every one is talking of 
the operation of law, of the reign of law, of 
obedience to law. But the word, when we test 
it, weighs lighter than it did. Owing to its 
constant employment in reference to the material 
sphere, it has for multitudes ceased to bear any 
moral signification at all. From its old meaning 
of the authority of a superior will, it has come 
to denote no more than inevitable sequence. 
Here again, then, we recognise one among the 
influences which have tended to lessen the sense 
of moral responsibility which was once firmly 
established in the general religious mind. 

To these more important causes we may add 
others which are none the less real because we 
cannot dignify them by the epithets theological 
or scientific. If we are to be perfectly candid, 
we shall have to admit that the condition of 
things which we are trying to account for is to 
be traced in no small degree to a habit of mind 
but little removed from indolence. On all hands 
the demand is being made for the minimising of 



Penitence 45 

labour in every possible way. Nor is the shrink- 
ing from sustained exertion only to be observed 
in the region of manual toil. It is equally ap- 
parent in the region of the intellect. Those who 
are best qualified to judge are continually warn- 
ing us that our age is one of diffusion rather 
than depth. There is much information, with 
little understanding. Everything is being made 
easy. We have popular lectures which give us 
in an agreeable form the results of the studies 
of others. Leading articles are cut up into sec- 
tions, with headlines to indicate their purport ; 
while newspapers are filled with pictures so as 
to save us still further the effort of thinking. 

We must not wonder if the same tendencies 
make themselves felt in the highest and most 
difficult sphere. We want to be good, but with 
the least possible trouble. Speak of the im- 
portance of definite belief, or of the value of 
self-discipline and mortification of the flesh, urge 
the necessity of living by rule — and to many you 
will appear as some belated survival of a less 
enlightened age. We flatter ourselves that at 
last, thanks to modern improvements, we have 
got ^ Reading without tears *" ; and we can see no 
reason why we should not have ' Religion without 



46 Personal Life 

tears ' as well ! And, indeed, we have plenty 
of it. But what is its worth? how deep does 
it go, or how high? has it joy, has it peace? 
what is its vision? and what is its power of in- 
fluence? 

It is when we ask questions like these that we 
see why it is that, although we have reason to 
be grateful for real gains which have come to us 
in recent years, we have yet little cause to be 
satisfied with the general result. We certainly 
cannot be content with the new, so long as we 
miss the solemnity, the strength, the spirituality 
of the old. 

Enough then, by way of suggestion, as to the 
influences which have operated to weaken our 
sense of the meaning of sin : enough at all events 
to guide us in regard to the directions in which 
we may look, and must work, for a remedy. 

Shall we not hope, for instance, that there may 
be a reaction from the reaction? that without 
necessarily returning to the former extreme of 
harshness, we may at least come to an agreement 
that 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of 
wisdom,** that reverence is the atmosphere in 
which alone the life of the soul can grow, and 



Penitence 47 

that the religion which stirs the emotions but 
fails to arouse the conscience is a sadly defective 
religion ? 

If this is to be, we must have a stronger 
preaching and teaching than has been common 
of late. There must be a more definite invoking 
of the Holy Spirit, whose ofBce it is to convince 
of sin. And we must not shun to declare ' the 
whole counsel ' of God, as set forth by our Lord 
and His Apostles. What is especially needed is 
the fuller theology which will harmonise the two 
conceptions of the character of God : which will 
shew us the ^Father of our spirits' as at the 
same time the 'Judge of all the earth'; which, 
when it leads us to address Him, will teach us 
to say 'Our Father, Which art in heaven. 
Hallowed be Thy name'; and to add with an 
equal fervour of conviction, ' Thy kingdom come, 
Thy will be done.' 

We must proclaim, as Christ did, the great 
principles of the ' Father's kingdom ' ; and must 
shew that love is not only compatible with, but 
inconceivable apart from, the wrath which is 
'revealed from heaven against all ungodliness 
and unrighteousness of men.' People must be 
made to feel that ' the New Testament is a severe 



48 Personal Life 

book,'^ and to see that the aim of its teaching 
is nothing less than salvation from sin. The 
Cross must be set forth not only as ' the mirror 
of the love of God,** but also as the measure of 
the guilt of man. 

Then too we have need to school ourselves 
afresh to speak about the Judgment Day. It 
will not be an easy task, in the existing mood of 
feeling, to treat this momentous theme in such a 
way as to carry conviction to the understanding 
and the conscience. We must find out how to 
do it. 

It may perhaps be worth while to relate an 
incident from the experience of one amongst us, 
as an instance of how the attempt may be made. 
He had been summoned to what proved to be 
the deathbed of a man in the parish in which 
he was serving. The man was a sculptor of no 
small pretensions : some of his figures are to be 
seen on the west front of one of our cathedrals. 
He was evidently very ill. The good priest 
could not but ask him how far he was prepared 
for the great change if it came. The reply was 
of the kind we have heard so often. He did 
1 Dean Church, 



Penitence 49 

not know that he had any particular reason to 
fear; he had done his best, and could think of 
many who had not succeeded as well. 

We recognise the type, and we are well aware 
of the difficulty of making much impression upon 
it. The clergyman was silent for a few moments. 
Then what he said was this : — 

' Suppose I were to take a block of your stone, 

and a mallet, and one of your chisels ; and were 

to set to work to carve out a head like one of 

those in your studio. I should do my best, and 

the result might be better than I had expected ; 

and my friends might say that they had no idea 

that I had it in me to do anything of the kind : 

until I really began to be quite pleased with my 

work. But what if I brought it to you ? You 

would wish to be kind, but you would see at a 

glance that there was nothing to praise. You 

might tell me that, with years of labour and 

training, I might possibly make a tolerable 

sculptor; but you would know well enough that 

what I had accomplished so far was simply 

nothing at all ; that there was no sort of merit 

or distinction about it, that, in fact, the stone 

had been ruined and wasted. And why would 

you judge so.? Why, of course, because you 

D 



50 Personal Life 

would look at the matter with an artist's eye; 
you would measure the work by the standard of 
your ideal of what it should have been, and you 
would therefore be able to estimate the extent 
of the failure.' 

Then he went on to point out the application 
of the parable. We men take our lives into our 
own hands, and set about to fashion them ac- 
cording to our own notions of what they should 
be. We imagine that we have succeeded fairly 
enough, and we are assured that it would be 
well for society if more of the lives about us 
were as good. But the time will come when we 
must appear before God for His judgment: and 
what will that be? He, the great Artist, has 
had His ideal for each one of us. He would 
have shewn it to us, and have realised it in 
us, if we had been willing to be taught and 
directed. As it is, our efforts are too often 
made in direct opposition to His purposes. He 
can judge us only by the extent to which His 
ideal has been attained. Much, therefore, that 
may seem respectable to us, must appear as the 
most lamentable failure in His eyes. 

The man listened attentively, and candidly 
admitted that this way of looking at the matter 



Penitence 51 

did ^make a difFerence.** It was a new light, 
because it shewed him his actions in their rela- 
tion to the Divine intention, about which he had 
never taken a thought. 

Only as we can help people to believe that 
God has a high intent for each one of us, and 
that to defeat this is to disappoint Him and to 
inflict a grievous wrong upon ourselves, shall we 
be able to deliver them from the easy-going creed 
which encourages them to imagine that, because 
they are in the hands of goodness, it can matter 
little what they do, or leave undone. Our 
teaching will not have accomplished what it 
should until it has produced a keen conviction 
that to sin against law is grievous, to sin 
against light is more grievous, but to sin against 
love is most grievous of all.^ 

Then also we shall do well to lay greater stress 
than many of us have been wont to lay, upon the 
gracious ordering whereby a supernatural glad- 
ness flows forth as the eflect of forgiveness into 
the truly repentant heart. There is no joy on 
earth which can exceed it. We must sing the 
praises of repentance, 'that stoop of the soul 
^ See Bishop Walsham How, The Closed Door^ p. 96. 



52 Personal Life 

which in bending upraises it too.'* The tear-drop 
lens has been to many a one the gate of pearl 
through which he has caught his first real 
glimpses of the kingdom drawing nigh. 

But — and it is to this that all our consideration 
has been leading us — there is an indispensable 
condition apart from which we can hope to do 
little or nothing. The priest must be the 
penitent. It is for him to lead the way. He 
more than others must feel the need and make 
the effort. The true theology which we pro- 
claim must first have been preached to ourselves. 
We must bend low before the Cross ; and we must 
ever act as those who are to be manifested before 
the Judgment Seat. Ours must be the blessed- 
ness of pardon ; and ours the ' sorrow for forgiven 
sin;i 

We have but to think of the interval that 
divides the tltterances of the fifth and the sixth 
chapters of the book of Isaiah, in order to realise 
how different in their effects may be the teachings 

1 A holy man wondered much why souls are so stunted, 
why there is not a more vigorous growth. He thought of all 
sorts of things. ' Is it the want of asceticism ? Is it the 
want of love ? or prayer ? ' At last he discovered that it 
arises from 'want of sorrow for forgiven sin.'— Dr Pusey's 
Spiritual Letters^ p. 295. 



Penitence 53 

of the same teacher in regard to sin. The con- 
tinuous ' Woe '' of chapter v. is tremendous, and 
it might seem as if nothing could stand against 
it; yet who of us does not feel that he has 
passed into another atmosphere, charged with 
an altogether different power to move and to 
melt, when in chapter vi. the same speaker is 
heard to exclaim, ' Woe is me^ for I am undone "^ ? 

Denunciations of evil are strangely unavailing. 
Our pulpits might ring with them, and our 
hearers be no better. But the pleading of the 
man who speaks of sins as he only can speak, who 
has felt the uncleanness and shame of them in his 
own soul, appeals with a power such as no force 
of words can give. 

Never were people more ready to detect un- 
reality in a preacher than those to whom we 
minister to-day : and never do they more quickly 
perceive it than when the subject is the subject 
of sin. If we are to convince them we must 
before all else be sincere. If we are not, we 
had better be silent until we can speak what we 
know. Then we may not always succeed; till 
then we shall certainly fail. 



Note 

(From the Private Devotions o/* Bishop Andre wes) 
The Aggravation of Sin 

Its measure, 

its harm, 

its scandal. 
Its quality. 

Its iteration, — how often ? 
Its continuation, — how long? 
The person, — by whom ? 

his age, condition, state, enlightenment. 
Its manner. 
Its motive, 
Its time. 
Its place. 
Its folly, ingratitude, hardness, contempt. 

An Act of Confession 

O God^ Thou knowest my foolishness, 
and my sins are not hid from Thee. 
I also acknowledge them, 
and my sin is ever before me. 

54 



Note 55 

Lord, Thou knowest all my desire, 

and my groaning is not hid from Thee. 
Thou knowest. Lord, that I speak the truth 
in Christ, and lie not ; 
my conscience also bearing me witness 
in the Holy Ghost, 
that I have great heaviness and continual 

sorrow in my heart, 
because I have thus sinned against Thee ; 
that I am a burden to myself in that I cannot 
sorrow more ; 
that I beseech from Thee 
a contrite heart. 

Woe is me ! 
That I did not reverence nor dread 
the incomprehensibleness of Thy Glory, 
Thy tremendous Power, 
the awfulness of Thy Presence, 
Thy strict Justice, 
Thy lovable Goodness. 

And now, O Lord, humbling myself 

under Thy mighty hand, 
for Thy great mercy, and for the glory of Thy Name, 

be merciful unto my sin : 
for it is great ; for it is exceeding great. 
For the multitude, the great multitude, 

of Thy loving-kindnesses. 
Lord, O Lord, be merciful unto me, of 

sinners the greatest. 



56 Note 

O my Lord, where sin hath abounded, 
there let Grace more exceedingly abound, 

O Lord, hear ; O Lord, forgive ; 
O Lord, hearken and do ; 
defer not for Thine own sake, O my God. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE DIFFICULTY OF PRAYER 

Bishop John Selwyn used to tell that, as his 
father, the first Bishop of New Zealand, was one 
day sitting in his study in Norfolk Island, a 
knock was heard at the door. A head looked 
in, which was at once recognised as that of a 
catechist from a distant station. ' Why have 
you come ? ' inquired the bishop. ' I want to be 
filled up ; and the people tell me that I want to 
be filled up," was the man's reply. 

How simple and true a confession : and how 
often, if we were quite sincere, we might make 
it of ourselves. No kind of work makes such 
demands as ministerial work. After much ^giving 
out ' we become exhausted, and we are not alone 
in recognising the fact. It is 'more life and 
fuller that we want." How are we to get it ? 

To begin with, we must realise that we are 
entirely dependent upon the Divine supply to 
satisfy our need. We must come to the source 



58 Personal Life 

of power, deeply conscious of our own unworthi- 
ness and insufBciency ; ' poor in spirit,"* ' hunger- 
ing and thirsting ' to be ^ filled.' That is the 
primary condition, the first necessity. It used 
to be maintained that ' nature abhors a vacuum.** 
Whether this be strictly true or not, we have 
good cause to believe that grace abhors a vacuum. 
The humble soul is not the soul which is sent 
empty away. 

But our duty does not end when we have 
brought ourselves to feel our need of grace. 
There is a further necessity. We must prepare 
ourselves to seek it by diligent Prayer. It is one 
thing to state the necessity in words, and another 
to give effect to it in practice. Indeed, this again 
is a matter which urgently calls for our serious 
attention. 

We have already spoken of one grave defect in 
the religious life of our time. We shall have to 
refer to others. We do so because it is a safe 
rule that we should look within ourselves for the 
failings and shortcomings which are most readily 
seen without. We are intimately linked with the 
life around us. We share in its movements, and 
are influenced by the forces which tell upon its 
character. It is for this reason that we do 



Prayer 59 

wisely to study it even when our immediate 
purpose is the consideration of the needs of our 
own individual life. 

Now on all sides to-day we have the complaint 
that there is little power of prayer. How con- 
stantly are we being told by one and another, 
' We find it so hard to pray. We can spend time 
in visiting, in attending committees, in teaching, 
in managing institutions, with far more ease and 
satisfaction than we can spend it in prayer. Our 
prayers are so poor and distracted. When we 
have been on our knees only a few minutes it 
seems like an hour. We know that it ought not 
to be so, yet so it is and we do not seem able to 
help it.' 

All of us must have had this said to us again 
and again. Few of us need to travel outside 
our own inner experience for the corroborative 
evidence that will convince us that such con- 
fessions are true. 

But if this be so, it must mean that there is 
utterly a fault among us. It is not necessary to 
adduce a long series of instances to prove that 
the great spiritual leaders and workers of the 
past have invariably been distinguished by the 
importance which they have assigned to prayer ; 



60 Personal Life 

and this, again, in spite of the fact that they 
may have differed most widely in their other 
beliefs and opinions. 

Luther wrote of himself in the busiest part of 
his life, ' I have so much to do that I cannot get 
on without three hours a day of praying.** ^ Of 
Borromeo, the saintly Cardinal of Milan, and of 
our own Bishop Andrewes, it was said that they 
were in the habit of spending five hours each day 
in meditation and prayer. 

We are made painfully conscious, when we read 
of experiences like these, that in spite of all our 
activities and studies we have need that some 
one should teach us afresh the very principles of 
religious life and work. There must be some- 
thing radically wrong when modern reformers, and 
even modern divines, are perpetually announcing 
that it is only with the greatest difficulty that 
they can ' find time ' for any prayers at all. 

A more serious symptom could scarcely be. 
Prayer has been aptly described as ' the pulse of 
the soul." Where prayer is strong and frequent, 
there the soul is in health and prospers ; when 

^ Quoted in a valuable paper bj the late Rev. H. Wright, 
published under the title Secret Prayer a Great Reality, 
(Bemrose, price Id.) 



Prayer 61 

prayer is intermittent and feeble, the life flags, 
moral duties begin to wear a forbidding aspect, and 
even the practical activities, which at first seemed 
able to take care of themselves, are found to lack 
the inward support without which they too, 
sooner or later, must inevitably fail. 

If, then, we had need to seek out the causes 
for the lack of penitence, we have certainly no 
less need to seek out the causes for our want 
of Prayer. 

In looking for these, most of us will be inclined 
to turn first in a direction in which our thoughts 
have gone already. It is natural to suggest that 
a principal cause is to be discovered in the 
questionings that have arisen in consequence of 
the scientific teachings which have been specially 
characteristic of modern intellectual life ; and 
here again it might be supposed that, in par- 
ticular, the prominence given to the thought of 
' law,' in the sense of universal and unalterable 
sequence, must have led, in no small measure, to 
the paralysis which has made it so difficult for us 
to be in earnest about our prayers. 

Without denying that there is truth in such a 
view, it is probably true also to say that a little 



62 Personal Life 

while ago there would have been more reason to 
attach importance to this particular influence 
than there is at the present time. It is now 
far more generally recognised than it was, that 
law implies of necessity a lawgiver; and that 
'government by law** is only an inaccurate 
expression for what is in reality government 
according to law. Moreover, the least considera- 
tion of what is perpetually taking place in our 
own experience suffices to shew us, that the 
range within which we can avail ourselves of our 
knowledge of the working of laws, so as to pro- 
duce efffects which we desire, is a very wide one. 
It follows that it is manifestly impossible to set 
limits to the operations of a mind and will pos- 
sessed of wisdom and power immeasurably superior 
to our own. For those by whom these funda- 
mental axioms are intelligently grasped, the diffi- 
culties as to prayer, which arise from purely 
scientific considerations, become reduced — it is 
scarcely too bold to say — to quite inconsiderable 
proportions.^ 

1 I would call attention to the following remarkable 
words : * The supposition that there is any inconsistency 
between the acceptance of the constancy of natural order, 
and a belief in the efficacy of prayer, is the more un- 
accountable as it is obviously contradicted by analogies 



Prayer 63 

On the whole, therefore, it is probable that 
we must seek the explanation we are in search 
of in another direction altogether; and it may 
well be that, when it is found, it will prove to be 
surprisingly simple. 

We are essentially a practical people, and as 
such are strongly utilitarian. We are ready 
enough to make effort when we are certain that 
we shall be repaid for our pains. Now with 
many, perhaps with most of us, the question 
which we need to have answered in regard to 
prayer is this: Does it practically make much 
difference whether we pray or do not? If we 
were convinced that it did, we should have 
more heart to pray, and to persevere in 
prayer in spite of anything that might tempt 
us from it. 

Our question in fact reduces itself to this: 
Granted that the Divine Being is as free — and of 

furnished by everyday experience. The belief in the efficacy 
of prayer depends upon the assumption that there is some- 
body, somewhere, who is strong enough to deal with the 
earth and its contents as men deal with the things and 
events which they are strong enough to modify or control ; 
and who is capable of being moved by appeals such as men 
make to one another.' — Professor Huxley, Nineteenth Century, 
Nov. 1887. 



64 Personal Life 

course He must be — to comply with our requests 
as we are ourselves when asked to do some service 
for one another; can we be absolutely certain 
that He wishes us to pray, and that He has made 
the fulfilment of His purposes in any real sense 
to depend upon our prayers ? 

We may frankly admit that it is by no means 
obvious that this should be so. Even if we start 
from the conception of God as our Father, the 
conception which we feel to be the highest that 
we can form of Him, it by no means follows as 
of necessity that we should go to Him with the 
account of our needs and desires. An earthly 
parent might quite conceivably say to his 
children, 'Believe me, I am wiser than you are; 
I know what is best for you. I will do what is 
right. It is not in the least necessary that you 
should ask me for anything." 

Without question, the Heavenly Father might 
have so ordered His dealings with us. He is 
infinitely above us. We are shortsighted and 
ignorant. He is wise and good. It might indeed 
seem reasonable that we should leave ourselves 
in His hands, and receive in silence what He 
saw best to send. We might even argue that it 



Prayer 65 

must be presumptuous on our part to suggest 
what His gifts are to be. 

Quite possibly, if we had to be guided by our 
reasonings alone, we might arrive at the con- 
clusion that this on the whole is the attitude 
most fitting for us to adopt. As we know, not 
a few persons have thought right to adopt it. 

And yet, even if we could reason ourselves 
into taking this point of view, it is not likely 
that most of us could remain satisfied with 
it. Something within us would most assuredly 
rebel ; a deep, strong instinct of the heart 
would rise in wrath to challenge the conclu- 
sion of the intellect. After all, we should 
feel that a true parent would be much more 
likely to use a different language. He would be 
much more likely to say, ' My children, I care for 
you; I know all your needs; but I desire to be 
to you far more than a provider. I want your 
confidence and your affection. I would have 
you brought into the very closest relations with 
myself. My will is that you should tell me 
your thoughts and your wants. Ask me for 
whatever you think would be good for you. If 
it is good, I will grant it; if not, I will give 
what is better.** 

E 



66 Personal Life 

Who does not see at once that this would be a 
much more fatherly way ? Which of us does not 
feel that a God whose pleasure it was to treat 
His children thus — ' a God so nigh in all that we 
call upon Him for' — would be a God towards 
whom we could be much more readily drawn in 
reverence and in love. 

But happily, as Christians, we are not left to 
be guided by either our reasonings or our feel- 
ings in so vitally important a matter. There is a 
Voice which speaks to us with final authority in 
regard to the great truths of the spiritual world. 
' No man hath seen God at any time ; the only 
begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the 
Father, He hath declared Him.' And no part of 
the revelation is more emphatically clear than 
the teaching as to the duty of prayer. 

For an example we need go no further than 
the opening sermon in which are preserved for us 
those most elementary utterances of our Lord's 
public ministry which have been happily described 
as the ' commonplaces of Christ.' It is to the 
sixth chapter of St Matthew's Gospel that we are 
accustomed to turn for well-known statements as 
to the dependence of men upon the care and the 



Prayer 67 

forethought of their Father in heaven. If He 
provides for the birds and the flowers, much more 
will He provide for His children. He knows the 
things they have need of. Such are the assur- 
ances which are to ennoble life, and banish the 
anxieties which contract and degrade it. 

Are we then to argue that no room is left for 
prayer? By no means. Almost in the same 
breath, our Lord goes on to say, ^Ask and it 
shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock 
and it shall be opened unto you ; for every 
one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh 
findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be 
opened.** And then, as if it were His intention 
to answer by anticipation the questionings that 
were likely to arise, and to render misgiving 
impossible, our Lord proceeds to apply the con- 
clusions which are most rightly to be drawn 
from the analogy of the home : ^ If ye then being 
evil know how to give good gifts to your children, 
how much more shall your Father which is in 
heaven give good things ' — and let us notice 
especially the emphasis laid upon the words which 
immediately follow — ' to them that ask Him ? ' 

It is not our purpose to write a treatise on 



68 Personal Life 

the Scriptural doctrine of prayer, or we should 
make it our business to show how this teaching 
of our Lord was foreshadowed in the writings of 
the Old Testament, as for instance in 1 Kings 
xviii. 1, 42; Ezek. xxxvi. 36, 37; Ps. ii. 8, 
passages which will repay most attentive con- 
sideration — and how completely it entered into 
the thought and experience of His Apostles. 

What it does concern us to make sure of here 
is the central fact that it is the Divine will, as 
that will is expressed to us by Him Who knew 
it as none other can know, that ^men ought 
always to pray' (St Luke xviii. 1); that God 
requires our prayers, and that it is His habit to 
grant us His gifts in response to them. 

To express all this in the simplest mono- 
syllables — if we want we must ask. That is the 
principle of prayer. 'Ask and ye shall have.' 
' Ye have not because ye ask not.** 

There is no hint in the teaching of our Lord 
that by our prayers we can change the Divine 
intentions. The perfect prayer will always find 
its fullest expression in the petition, 'Thy will 
be done ' (see St Matt. vi. 10, and xxvi. 42). A 
wish to alter the will of the Father would be 
presumptuous indeed; would seem to be almost 



Prayer 69 

a blasphemy. Very different is the office of 
prayer as understood in the Christian sense. 

Prayer is for us the appointed means whereby 
God has ordained to accomplish His purposes 
of blessing. When He determines to bless. He 
moves His servants to pray. The 'prayer of 
faith ** is the prayer which is inspired by a certain 
conviction as to a definite intention on the part 
of God. 'This is the confidence that we have 
in Him, that if we ask anything according to 
His will He heareth us : and if we know that He 
hear us whatsoever we ask, we know that we 
have the petitions that we desired of Him.'i 

Would it not make all the difference to our 
estimate of the value of prayer if we could grasp 
afresh this simple truth that God waits for our 
prayers, and makes it His rule to give in response 
to them ? Let us think of some of the practical 
results that might be expected to follow from 
such a belief. 

1. In the first place we should realise more 

than we have done that Prayer is work. We 

have no difficulty in persuading ourselves that 

prayer is preparation for work. It is in very 

1 1 St John V. 14 f . 



70 Personal Life 

truth much more ; Orare est lahorare — to pray is 
to work. To pray is to put into operation a 
cause in order to produce an effect. 'The sup- 
plication of a righteous man availeth much in its 
working.** 'Prayer moves the Arm that moves 
the worlds. To bring salvation down."* Time is 
well spent that is spent on our knees in the 
study or in the church. 

2. Those who pray much are increasingly con- 
vinced that Prayer is high work. Have we not 
been guilty of making a serious mistake in the 
way in which we have sometimes allowed our- 
selves to speak about prayer? How common it 
is to hear it suggested, ' If you cannot do any- 
thing else, at least you can pray.** Surely that 
must be wrong. Surely it would be more true 
to say, 'If you can pray, if you have in any 
degree acquired the holy art, then for God's sake 
and man's sake do not do anything else. Give 
yourself to it ; continue on the mount with hands 
upraised. There will be no lack of fighters down 
below, who will triumph by the help of your 
prayers.' 

In order to realise the place in work which 
should be assigned to prayer, we need but recall 



Prayer 71 

the thought of the consecutive stages of the 
ministry of our Lord. At its beginning that 
ministry chiefly consisted of the active occupa- 
tions of preaching, and teaching, and healing. 
Then followed the passive stage of suffering. 
That also was work, and higher work. Have we 
not many a time found ourselves saying as we 
stood by the side of the sufferer, ' My brother," or 
'My sister, think not that you are condemned 
to idleness, or set aside as useless, because you 
can no longer go hither and thither and do the 
things that you did. Believe it, you have been 
called to a more mysterious and more far-reaching 
service. The best blessings that have come to 
our race have come through pierced hands. We 
may not understand it fully, but nevertheless it 
is true that our greatest benefactors have been 
the sufferers. Rejoice that to you also has been 
granted some share of their privilege.' 

But His ministry did not end with suffering. 
After He had suffered He rose and went on high. 
He had said, ' It is expedient for you that I go.' 
' I go unto My Father . . . and I will pray.' Now 
'He ever liveth to make intercession for us.' 
' Thou art our Moses out of sight : Pray for us 
or we perish quite.' Must we not believe that 



72 Personal Life 

this, the mediatorial ministry, is a stage yet 
higher than either of the preceding ? 

Time was when the Church saw it to be her 
wisdom to call aside those of her children who 
had clearly a vocation for prayer, in order that 
they might devote the chief energies of their 
lives to the holy task of intercession. Such a 
time may come again. In the meanwhile we 
must do all we can to make it clear that we 
know of no work that ranks higher than the 
work of prayer. 

3. Those who have rightly grasped the import- 
ance of prayer will not marvel greatly if they find 
by experience that Prayer is hard work. All 
high work is hard work. 

No man in England within recent years has 
possessed the faculty for abstract thinking in a 
greater degree than did Samuel Taylor Coleridge ; 
yet it was Coleridge who declared that, ' Of all 
mental exercises earnest prayer is the most 
severe.' It is not difficult to see why it must 
be so. For earnest prayer, all the higher powers 
must needs be employed — reasoning, imagination, 
affection, conscience, and will — and further, all 
must be bent and united in a single aim. 



Prayer 73 

It is no easy thing to ' gird up ' the powers of 
mind and spirit. We have often had occasion 
to observe how extremely difficult the man whose 
days are spent in manual labour finds the per- 
formance of some simple task which happens to 
necessitate an unwonted use of his intellect. We 
have seen, for instance, how the perspiration will 
start to the brow of a labourer as he awkwardly 
handles the pen and makes his attempts to enter 
his name in the vestry registers. Half a day's 
work in the fields would have taken less out of 
him ! And there are multitudes who have not 
any more power of using their souls. A very 
few minutes spent in a serious effort of prayer 
leave them completely exhausted. 

Nor is the feeling of strain confined to begin- 
ners. Even those who by continual use have had 
their spiritual senses exercised have known what 
it was to be brought by their pleading in prayer 
to the verge of an utter prostration. Like Jacob 
of old, who ' had power with God and prevailed,' 
they have carried for long the marks of the 
conflict. 

Nay further, we may even appeal to the ex- 
perience of Him who is greater than the greatest 
of His saints. 



74 Personal Life 

If we would really know what the labour of 
prayer may involve, we must go to the Garden 
and see Him under the olives bowed down to the 
earth. There as He ' prayed,"" and ' prayed again 
more earnestly j*" so great was His agony that — we 
note it with reverence and wonder — 'His sweat 
was as it were great drops of blood falling down 
to the ground.' 

4. Once more, with no hesitation let us say it. 
Prayer is our work. ' We will give ourselves 
continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the 
word' — and in that order — was the determina- 
tion of the Apostles. 'Let him call for the 
elders of the church, and let them pray,' was the 
direction of St James. He can have little of the 
true spirit of a priest who has no longing to bear 
some part in that ministry of intercession in 
which he knows that his great High Priest is 
ceaselessly engaged. 

But if prayer is to be with us a work, it will 
have to be regulated by method. It has been 
truly insisted that 'no one will make much of 
prayer who does not make a business of it.' We 
may not wait for times of special emotion, ready 
as we must be to use them when they come. 



Prayer 75 

There must be a definite rule. We must win 
ourselves to our high task by varying the details 
of it. Subjects must be assigned to the different 
days : lists of intercession must be kept, and 
answers must be noted as they are received. A 
book systematically used for this purpose becomes 
in the course of years a most unassailable witness 
to the efficacy of persevering prayer. 

Would indeed that we might realise that this 
is the work to which we have been specially 
called, and of which it is not too much to say 
that God is ever waiting to accept it at our 
hands. There are those who may be qualified to 
undertake many parts of the work of a parish ; 
but who will make good the losses that are in- 
curred by an unprayerful priest ? On the other 
hand, who can measure the gains, in all depart- 
ments of work, where the pastor is known and 
felt to be a man of prayer ? 

' Whilst we may find instances of success, and 
sometimes of great and unlikely success,' said the 
late Bishop Wilberforce, ' in the ministry of those 
who have lacked almost every other qualification, 
there can, I believe, be no instances found of a 
successful ministry which was not full of prayers.' ^ 
^ Addresses to Candidates for Ordination^ p. 144. 



76 Personal Life 

It would be possible to tell of one of our 
number who for years has made intercession the 
central reality of his life and work. He is the 
vicar in a village of which the church stands 
apart on the summit of a considerable hill. 
When the nights are dark and the wind is rising, 
it has long been his practice to go up to the 
church and kindle the beacon on the tower as a 
guide to the fisher-folk away in the oiling. They 
see the light, as it flashes over the waters, and 
they know that the good priest who sustains it is 
spending the intervals of the night down in the 
church in prayer for their souls and their bodies. 
It is little marvel that there is almost nothing 
they will not do for him in return. 

Let us be the best students, and preachers, and 
organisers we may ; but above all, and before all, 
let us covet to pray. So only shall we ourselves 
be filled with the Holy Ghost, and be made cen- 
tres of spiritual influence. Happy indeed are the 
parishes where the priests, and the people after 
them, have learned to pi'ay ! 



Note 

The following passage from William Law's 
Serious Call (chap, xxi.) illustrates remark- 
ably the effects of a habit of prayer upon both 
the worker and the work : — 

' Ouranius is a holy priest, full of the spirit of 
the Gospel, watching, labouring, and praying for 
a poor country village. Every soul in it is as 
dear to him as himself; and he loves them all, as 
he loves himself; because he prays for them all, 
as often as he prays for himself. 

If his whole life is one continual exercise of 
great zeal and labour, hardly ever satisfy'^d with 
any degrees of care and watchfulness, 'tis because 
he has learn'^d the great value of souls, by so 
often appearing before God, as an intercessor for 
them. 

He never thinks he can love, or do enough for 
his flock ; because he never considers them in any 
other view, than as so many persons, that by 
receiving the gifts and graces of God, are to 
become his hope, his joy, and his crown of 
rejoicing. 

He goes about his Parish, and visits every- 

77 



78 Note 

body in it, but he visits in the same spirit of 
piety that he preaches to them ; he visits them to 
encourage their virtues, to assist them with his 
advice and counsel, to discover their manner of 
life, and to know the state of their souls, that he 
may intercede with God for them according to 
their particular necessities. 

When Ouranius first entred into holy orders, 
he had a haughtiness in his temper, a great con- 
tempt and disregard for all foolish and unreason- 
able people ; but he has prayM away this spirit, 
and has now the greatest tenderness for the most 
obstinate sinners ; because he is always hoping, 
that God will sooner or later hear those prayers 
that he makes for their repentance. 

The rudeness, ill-nature, or perverse behaviour 
of any of his flock, used at first to betray him 
into impatience ; but it now raises no other 
passion in him, than a desire of being upon his 
knees in prayer to God for them. Thus have his 
prayers for others altered and amended the state 
of his own heart. 

It would strangely delight you to see with 
what spirit he converses, with what tenderness 
he reproves, with what affection he exhorts, and 
with what vigor he preaches ; and 'tis all owing 
to this, because he reproves, exhorts, and preaches 
to those for whom he first prays to God. 

This devotion softens his heart, enlightens his 



Note 79 

mind, sweetens his temper, and makes everything 
that comes from him, instructive, amiable, and 
affecting. 

At his first coming to his little village, it was 
as disagreeable to him as a prison, and every day 
seem'd too tedious to be endured in so retired a 
place. He thought his parish was too full of 
poor and mean people, that were none of them 
fit for the conversation of a Gentleman. 

This put him upon a close application to his 
studies. He kept much at home, writ notes upon 
Homer and Plautus, and sometimes thought it 
hard to be called to pray by any poor body, 
when he was just in the midst of one of Homer's 
battels. 

This was his polite, or I may rather say, poor, 
ignorant turn of mind, before devotion had got 
the government of his heart. 

But now his days are so far from being tedious, 
or his Parish too great a retirement, that he 
now only wants more time to do that variety of 
good which his soul thirsts after. The solitude 
of his little parish is become matter of great 
comfort to him, because he hopes that God 
has placed him and his flock there, to make it 
their way to heaven. 

He can now not only converse with, but gladly 
attend and wait upon the poorest kind of people. 
He is now daily watching over the weak and 



80 Note 

infirm, humbling himself to perverse, rude, 
ignorant people, wherever he can find them; 
and is so far from desiring to be considered as 
a Gentleman, that he desires to be used as the 
servant of all ; and in the spirit of his Lord 
and Master girds himself, and is glad to kneel 
down and wash any of their feet. 

He now thinks the poorest creature in his 
Parish good enough, and great enough, to 
deserve the humblest attendances, the kindest 
friendships, the tenderest offices, he can possibly 
shew them. 

He is so far now from wanting agreeable 
company, that he thinks there is no better con- 
versation in the world, than to be talking with 
poor and mean people about the kingdom of 
heaven. 

All these noble thoughts and divine senti- 
ments are the effects of his great devotion; he 
presents every one so often before God in his 
prayers, that he never thinks he can esteem, 
reverence, or serve those enough, for whom he 
implores so many mercies from God. 

Ouranius is mightily affected with this passage 
of holy Scripture : The effectual Jervent prayer of 
a righteous man availeth much. 

This makes him practise all the arts of holy 
living, and aspire after every instance of piety 
and righteousness, that his prayers for his flock 



Note 81 

may have their full force, and avail much with 
God. 

For this reason he has sold a small estate that 
he had, and has erected a charitable retirement 
for ancient, poor people to live in prayer and 
piety, that his prayers being assisted by such 
good works, may pierce the clouds, and bring 
down blessings upon these souls committed to 
his care. 

Ouranius reads how God himself said unto 
Abimelech concerning Abraham, He is a prophet ; 
he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live. And 
again, how he said of Job, And my servant Job 
shall pray for you ; for him will I accept. 

From these passages Ouranius justly concludes, 
that the prayers of men eminent for holiness of 
life, have an extraordinary power with God ; 
that He grants to other people such pardons, 
reliefs and blessings, through their prayers, as 
would not be granted to men of less piety and 
perfection. This makes Ouranius exceeding 
studious of christian perfection, searching after 
every grace and holy temper, purifying his heart 
all manner of ways, fearful of every error and 
defect in his life, lest his prayers for his flock 
should be less availing with God, through his 
own defects in holiness. 

This makes him careful of every temper of his 
heart, give alms of all that he hath, watch, and 

F 



82 Note 

fast, and mortify, and live according to the 
strictest rules of temperance, meekness, and 
humility, that he may be in some degree like an 
Abraham, or a Job in his Parish, and make such 
prayers for them as God will hear and accept. 

These are the happy effects, which a devout 
intercession hath produced in the life of 
Ouranius.' 



CHAPTER V 

DEVOTION TO OUR LORD 

We have endeavoured to indicate some of the 
directions in which effort is most likely to be 
valuable in enabling us to gain more fully for 
ourselves the power of Divine grace, and to 
become the instruments whereby that power may 
be brought to bear afresh upon the hearts and 
consciences of others. We have named Penitence 
and Prayer as two conditions, indispensable at all 
times, upon which it would seem to be necessary 
to lay particular emphasis at the present time. 

We must go further yet. Much as we should 
rightly insist upon the need of both penitence 
and prayer, we may not suppose that they re- 
present all that is to be required of those who 
are to attain to a full growth of Christian 
experience. Indeed we have only to reflect for a 
moment to feel that this is so. In themselves 
neither penitence nor prayer are distinctly and 
exclusively Christian. All other religions have 



84 Personal Life 

in some degree made them a part of their 
discipline. At the most they represent the 
preparation of the soil in which the higher life 
is to develop, and the welcoming of the influences 
which promote that development, rather than 
the completed perfection of flower and fruit. 
For this another condition must needs be ful- 
filled. 

On the closing page of the Gospels there is 
contained what we might not inaptly describe 
as an examination paper intended to test pro- 
ficiency in discipleship. It consists of but three 
questions, and they are all alike: ^Lovest thou 
Me?' Christianity can only have its perfect 
work in us as we set ourselves to learn the lesson 
of absolute Devotion to our Lord. 

However often we may have pondered the 
matter, and however familiar the thought of 
it may be to us, we cannot do otherwise than 
give it its place when we are dealing with the 
requirements of personal life. And again we 
shall make it our aim to be as simple and 
practical as possible. 

To begin with, then, let us ask. In what does 
devotion consist ? 



Devotion to Our Lord 85 

Devotion — the noblest fact in human story — 
may be of two kinds. There is, in the first place, 
devotion to a Cause ; as, for example, to the cause 
of knowledge, or justice, or social reform. Men 
have given themselves, times without number, 
to serve the interests of these ; and very splendid 
and uplifting their devotion has been. 

And there is a yet loftier devotion than this. 
It is devotion to a Person : the loyalty of a pupil 
to his master, or a soldier to his leader; the 
affection of parent and child, of husband and 
wife, of brother, or sister, or friend — an even 
more enkindling and powerful devotion. 

Some one has exquisitely said that, ' To love is 
the perfect of the verb to live.' Devotion is love 
when it has found the object which can draw 
from it the very best that it has to give. 

When we ask which of these devotions it is 
that our Lord requires from His followers, we 
have to answer unhesitatingly that He requires 
them both. He calls upon us to consecrate all 
that we have unreservedly to His cause, bidding 
us count ourselves happy if we may suffer for it. 
But, first and foremost. He asks for devotion 
to His Person. It is ^For My sake, and the 



86 Personal Life 

GospePs.' We must many times have felt it to 
be in the highest degree remarkable that He, 
who more than all besides was ' meek and lowly 
in heart/ should so often and so earnestly insist 
that His Person is to be the object of supremest 
affection. 'He that loveth father or mother 
more than Me is not worthy of Me."* 'If any 
man come to Me, and hate not his father, and 
mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and 
sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be 
My disciple/ No language which He could have 
used could have spoken more strongly than that. 
And there can be no question that, all through 
the ages, He has obtained what He has asked. 
High as is the demand, the response has not 
proved to be impossible. From its earliest days 
the passion for Christ^s Person has been the un- 
failing characteristic of a living Christianity. 
The beautiful legend that the heart of Ignatius, 
when recovered after his martyrdom, was found 
to be inscribed with the name of Christ, is true 
to the spirit of the faith as it has existed from 
the first. It was the love of their Master that 
inspired generation after generation of confessors 
to bear their witness in defiance of threatenings 
and tortures. The flame of devotion burned with 



Devotion to Our Lord 87 

an ardour which no power on earth was able to 
quench. The world, which was not in the secret, 
when it witnessed the joy and tested to the 
utmost the endurance of the Christians, could 
only conclude that they must be possessed by 
some quite unintelligible madness. 

Would that some one might write down for us 
a history of the exploits which from those days 
to our own have had their origin in devotion to 
the Person of our Lord ! When it is written, it 
may well carry on its forefront the remarkable 
words, familiar to most of us, which are said to 
have been uttered in his exile by Napoleon I. 

' Jesus Christ was more than man. ... I have 
inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic 
devotion that they would have died for me, . . . 
but to do this it was necessary that I should be 
visibly present with the electric influence of my 
looks, of my words, of my voice. When I saw 
men and spoke to them, I lighted up the flame 
of self-devotion in their hearts. . . . Christ alone 
has succeeded in so raising the mind of man 
toward the Unseen, that it becomes insensible to 
the barriers of time and space. Across a chasm 
of eighteen hundred years, Jesus Christ makes a 
demand which is beyond all others difficult to 



88 Personal Life 

satisfy ; He asks for that which a philosopher 
may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, 
or a father of his children, or a bride of her 
spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the 
human heart ; He will have it entirely to Himself. 
He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith 
His demand is granted. Wonderful ! In de- 
fiance of time and space, the soul of man, with 
all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexa- 
tion to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely 
believe in Him experience that supernatural love 
towards Him. This phenomenon is unaccount- 
able : it is altogether beyond the scope of man's 
creative powers.''^ 

Let us be certain, then, that Christians are 
Christ's men — disciples, soldiers, freedmen, of 
their Lord. And let us be certain also that, if 
the power of Christianity is to be renewed at any 
time, it can only be by the renewal of this holy 
attachment to the Person of Christ. Zeal for 
doctrines, adherence to system, these sooner or 
later will slacken and give way. Only one motive 
can be relied on to keep us at our task, amid 

^ The above is the translation given by Dr Liddon in his 
Bampton Lectures, For evidence of the historical accuracy 
of the reported conversation, see the long note on pages 
150 and 151 of that work. 



Devotion to Our Lord 89 

discouragements and disappointments, and when 
the heats of youth are over. One power alone 
will suffice to expel selfishness, to curb impa- 
tience, to inspire gentleness, and to banish 
timidity. 

Our practical question, therefore, is this : How 
can devotion to our Lord be quickened and 
strengthened in our hearts? By what that we 
can do should we strive to increase it ? Emotions 
are hard to excite, and still harder to maintain ; 
indeed, as we know, they are not by any means 
always subject to our control. How then can we 
hope to be able to make this highest passion the 
master force in our lives ? 

The answer may be given in two parts : — 

1. Love to our Lord is, as a rule, the outcome 
of a consciousness of His love to us. The highest 
devotion has ever been the fruit of ' the faith of 
the Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself 
for me.** 

Political economists tell us of a 'magic of 
property ."^ By this is meant the quite new in- 
terest which a man is wont to feel in a thing 
when he can say of it that it is his very own; 
an interest which inclines him to make efforts. 



90 Personal Life 

and even sacrifices he would never otherwise have 
dreamt of making. This ' magic of property ' has 
something corresponding to it in spiritual experi- 
ence. It is when the truth is brought home to us 
that we have a strictly personal interest and 
share in the great facts of the Divine redemption, 
that we are able to appropriate their value and 
force in such a degree as to make them the joy 
and inspiration of our lives. 

May we not rightly say that it is one purpose 
of the Sacraments thus to bring home to our 
hearts and minds our personal interest in ^our 
common salvation ' ? Who but has felt the soul- 
stirring power of the words, ' The Body of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, which was given^or thee ** ? 

The great moments of life are those in which — - 
at the altar, in some quiet spot of nature, over 
a book, or through the experience of an earthly 
friendship — there has been granted a new 
hint or assurance of the ' love of Christ which 
passeth knowledge." It has been the story of 
that love which has arrested the attention and 
agitated the heart of many a lad and girl in the 
freshness of early youth; yes, and of many an 
earnest priest and vigorous layman, filling them 
with the longing to do something for Him who 



Devotion to Our Lord 91 

counted no surrender too great to make for 
them. 

2. But if the love to our Lord, which has 
been awakened by the thought of all that He 
has done for us, is to continue as a permanent 
force in our lives, it must needs be strengthened 
and sustained by devout meditation upon what 
He was, and therefore is, in Himself. It is 
while we are thus ' musing ' that ' the fire burns."* 
From the first feelings of gratitude and admira- 
tion the true disciples pass little by little to the 
self-forgetful adoration of perfected devotion. 

Do we realise as we should how remarkable is the 
provision that has been made for our growth in the 
knowledge of Christ ? The more we think of it, 
the more we are impressed by its variety and 
completeness. With no fear of contradiction we 
may assert that, in the whole compass of recorded 
history, there exists no such wealth of materials 
for the knowledge of any individual as can com- 
pare with that which we have in the Gospels for 
the knowledge of our Lord. In those wonderful 
biographies we have pictures of what He was, 
taken from four very different points of view. In 
one we are allowed to see clearly what in another 
is left in shade. We can combine them as we 



92 Personal Life 

do the pictures in the stereoscope. As we con- 
tinue to gaze, the natural surroundings, the 
historical conditions, the lake, the Judaean hills, 
the Mount of Olives, the keenly marked Jewish 
faces, stand out graphically before us ; and, above 
all, the minutest details of the principal figure, 
His deeds. His words, His very looks, become 
extraordinarily vivid and real. 

So perfectly is this the case that the words of 
Erasmus, bold as they may appear, contain no 
exaggeration. That scholarly student did not 
scruple to say: ^ These writings bring back to 
you the living image of that most holy mind, 
the very Christ Himself speaking, healing, dying, 
rising, in fact so entirely present, that you would 
see less of Him if you beheld Him with your eyes.** ^ 

And long before the days of Erasmus thought- 
ful men had learned to understand how inex- 
haustible are the resources of knowledge which 
are available to us in the Gospel presentations 
of our Lord. They saw with loving delight that 
there is no relationship, no set of social condi- 
tions, no problem of suffering, no one of the 
numberless circumstances of the most ordinary 

1 The original of the passage is prefixed to the Greek 
Testament edited by Drs Westcott and Hort. 



Devotion to Our Lord 93 

life, which does not receive its illumination from 
Him who is the Light of the world. 

How delightfully ardent and simple, for in- 
stance, are the following words in which one such 
spoke of the details to be noted by those who 
would make full use of the sacred narrative. Our 
feeling as we read his list is that he might have 
gone on with it for ever ! 

'Always and everywhere have Him devoutly 
before the eyes of your mind, in His behaviour 
and in His ways; as when He is with His dis- 
ciples and when He is with sinners; when He 
speaks and when He preaches; when He goes 
forth and when He sits down; when He speaks 
and when He wakes; when He eats and when 
He serves others; when He heals the sick, and 
when He does His other miracles ; setting forth 
to thyself in thy heart His ways and His doings, 
how humbly He bore Himself among men, how 
tenderly among His disciples, how pitiful He 
was to the poor, to whom He made Himself 
like in all things, and who seemed to be His 
own special family; how He despised none nor 
shrunk from them, not even from the leper; 
how He paid no court to the rich, how free He 
was from the cares of the world, and from trouble 



94 Personal Life 

about the needs of the body ; how patient under 
insult, and how gentle in answering, for He 
sought not to maintain His cause by keen and 
bitter words, but with gentle and humble answer 
to cure another's malice; what composure in all 
His behaviour, what anxiety for the salvation of 
souls, for the love of whom He also deigned to 
die; how He offered Himself as the pattern of 
all that is good ; how compassionate He was to 
the afflicted, how He condescended to the im- 
perfection of the weak, how He despised not 
sinners ; how mercifully He received the penitent, 
how dutiful He was to His parents, how ready 
in serving all, according to His own words, 
" I am among you as he that doth serve "" ; how 
He shunned all display and show of singularity ; 
how He avoided all occasions of offence; how 
temperate in eating and drinking, how modest 
in appearance, how earnest in prayer, how sober 
in His watching, how patient of toil and want ; 
how peaceful and calm in all things.'^ 

We live in the age of books. They pour out 

upon us from the press in an ever-increasing mul- 

^ Ludolfus de Saxonia (1330). Prooem. in Vitam Christi; 
quoted by Dean Church, Human Life and its Conditions^ pp. 
192 f. 



Devotion to Our Lord 95 

titude. And we are always reading. Manuals, 
text-books, articles, books of devotion, books of 
criticism, books about the Bible, books about 
the Gospels, are devoured with avidity. But 
what amount of time and labour do we give to 
the consideration of the Gospels themselves ? 

We are constantly tempted to imagine that we 
' get good ' more quickly by reading some modern 
statement of truth, which we find it compara- 
tively easy to appropriate because it is presented 
to us in a shape and from a standpoint with 
which our education, or it may be party asso- 
ciation, has made us familiar. But the good 
that we acquire readily is not that which enters 
most deeply into our being, and becomes an 
abiding possession. 

It would be well if we could realise quite 
simply that nothing worth the having is to be 
gained without the winning. The great truths 
of nature are not offered to us in such a form 
as makes it easy to grasp them : the treasures 
of grace must be sought with all the skill and 
energy which are characteristic of the man who 
is searching for goodly pearls. 

The patient, intelligent study of the fourfold 
Gospel is a task not of weeks but of years. But 



96 Personal Life 

here again^ as in the case of prayer, we should 
be encouraged to persevere if only we could be 
certain that the effort expended would secure a 
return such as can be obtained by no other 
means. And may we not be certain? 

It is no uncommon thing to hear com- 
plaints about the want of force in religious 
people to-day. ^We have goodness,' said an 
acute observer who lately passed from among us, 
'but we lack character.' Amid much that is 
excellent there is little that makes an impression. 
Can it be doubted that one chief reason for 
this is to be traced in the too general failure to 
go direct to the original sources of our knowledge 
of the Person of our Lord ? 

Sometimes, as we know, an illustration will at 
once convey to the mind a more rapid and exact 
description of that which we wish to make plain 
than could be conveyed by the most cogent of 
logical statements. Let us try what such help 
can do for us in the present case.^ 

You are a visitor, let us suppose, in Florence, 

^ The illustration which follows was suggested to me many- 
years ago by a nonconformist minister, whose name I can- 
not remember, as we were travelling together on the con- 
tinent. I have never ceased to be grateful to him for it. 



Devotion to Our Lord 97 

and have found your way into the studio of an 
artist there. Your attention is immediately 
arrested by a painting of a masterpiece which you 
have seen in one or the other of the world-famous 
galleries. You venture a question as to the price 
it might be expected to fetch. The amount 
named is so large as to be virtually prohibitory. 
In a moment or two, however, another painting 
is produced which for aught you are able to see 
exactly resembles the first. This you are told 
you may have at a much more moderate figure. 
The difference is so marked that you express your 
astonishment, and ask an explanation. The reason 
given is this. That first copy was made in the 
gallery. In order to obtain the necessary per- 
mission, the painter had to put down his name on 
a list and to wait, it may have been several years, 
until his turn arrived. At last he had found 
himself in the presence of the Rafiael, or the 
Titian, or the Correggio, whichever it may have 
been. There you could have seen him seated 
with his easel and canvas. But days passed by 
before he began his work. Intently he pored 
over each line, and each tone of colour. After a 
while the face began to grow upon him, until the 
vision of it passed down with him into the street, 



98 Personal Life 

followed him to his home, and haunted his im- 
agination as he lay on his bed at night. Then 
he took up his brush, and it seemed as if the 
spirit of the old master had possessed him, and 
were directing his hand. The picture completed, 
he carried it off with pride. Many have been the 
reproductions that he has made from it since. 
One of these you may have, as he tells you ; but 
the first he will not part with if he can help it. 
He knows, if you do not, that there is all the 
difference in the world between a copy of a copy, 
and the copy of the original. 

And is not this just the difference that we so 
often feel, and find so difficult to account for? 
We meet with persons who have seriously resolved 
to set before themselves a standard of spiritual 
attainment. What they have done is this. They 
have fixed upon an individual whom they admire, 
whom they have seen, or of whom they have read 
in a book ; and they have determined to be ' like 
that.' The result is what we see. There is much 
that is praiseworthy, little perhaps with which it 
would be easy to find any particular fault ; and 
yet we are conscious that something is wanting — 
indeed we might almost go so far as to say every- 
thing is wanting — which gives its distinction and 



Devotion to Our Lord 99 

interest to character. Yes ! this is what is wrong ; 
at the most they are copies of copies. 

Then it happens, once and again, alas ! all too 
rarely, that we meet with a different experience. 
We are privileged to know some one who has 
said, ' I will go straight to the Gospels. I will 
set my gaze upon Him who alone is full of grace 
and truth. In Him only shall I behold the ideal of 
beauty. In His fulness alone can I hope to dis- 
cover what my own particular life was intended 
to be. Let me know more and more what He 
was like. Let me be filled with His Spirit; 
if so be that I may, in ever so small a degree, 
shew forth any of the lineaments of His perfect 
manhood.** And again we have seen the result. 
There has been a freshness, a fearlessness, a 
freedom from conventionality, combined with a 
humility, a reverence, a patience, which have un- 
mistakably betokened a character that has derived 
its impress and drawn its inspiration from the 
highest possible source. In short, what we have 
seen is a copy of the Original. 

Happy would it be if we could count that day 
a lost day which has not added something to our 
understanding of that Original. When shall we 

LofC. 



100 Personal Life 

believe that there is no honour which earth has 
in its power to bestow, that is for a moment to 
be compared with the honour we receive when 
those to whom we minister are constrained to take 
knowledge that there is anything in our lives 
which in any way reminds them of their Lord ? 



Note I 

A STRIKING example of what the Imitatio 
Christi can mean under the most modern condi- 
tions is to be found in the remarkable passage in 
which his biographer describes what the Person 
of Christ had become to Frederick Robertson 
of Brighton. Those who remember it will be 
thankful to see it again. 

' The Incarnation was to him the centre of all 
History, the blossoming of Humanity. The Life 
which followed the Incarnation was the explana- 
tion of the life of God, and the only solution of 
the life of man. He did not speak much of 
loving Christ : his love was fitly mingled with 
that veneration which makes love perfect; his 
voice was solemn, and he paused before he spoke 
His Name in common talk ; for what that Name 
meant had become the central thought of his 
intellect, and the deepest realisation of his spirit. 
He had spent a world of study, of reverent 
meditation, of adoring contemplation on the 
gospel history. 

'Nothing comes forward more visibly in his 
letters than the way in which he had entered into 

101 



102 Note 

the human life of Christ. To that everything is 
referred — by that everything is explained. The 
gossip of a drawing-room, the tendencies of the 
time, the religious questions of the day, . . . the 
loneliness and the difficulties of his work, were 
not so much argued upon or combated, as at once 
and instinctively brought to the test of a Life 
which was lived out eighteen centuries ago, but 
which went everywhere with him. 

' Out of this intuitive reception of Christ, and 
from this ceaseless silence of meditation which 
makes the blessedness of great love, there grew 
up in him a deep comprehension of the whole, as 
well as a minute sympathy with all the delicate 
details of the character of Christ. Day by day, 
with passionate imitation, he followed his Master, 
musing on every action, revolving in thought the 
interdependence of all that Christ had said or 
done, weaving into the fibres of his heart the 
principles of the Life he worshipped, till he had 
received into his being the very impression and 
image of that unique Personality. His very 
doctrines were the Life of Christ expressed in 
words. The Incarnation, Atonement, and Resur- 
rection of Christ were not dogmas to him. In 
himself he was daily realising them. They were 
in him a life, a power, a light. This was his 
Christian consciousness.'' — Life and Letters^ pp. 
416 f. 



Note II 

The following extract from a Sermon preached 
by the Rev. Charles Marriott (Parker, 1843) was 
included by Bishop King in an address to the 
members of the last Lambeth Conference at their 
Devotional Day: — 

' What is reason, but a partaking of the Light 
that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world? what is poetry, but the burning of the 
heart when He is near ? what is art, but the 
striving to recollect His lineaments? what is 
history, but the traces of His iron rod or His 
Shepherd's staff?' 

' Meditation on Him, prayer to Him, learning 
of Him, conformity to Him, partaking of Him, 
are the chief business of the Christian life.' 

To this last the Bishop added — I have his 
permission to quote the words : 

*0h! if we had only made it so, how much 
happier, how much stronger, we might have 
been; how much stronger to help others, and 
to make them happy ! ' 



108 



CHAPTER VI 

SECULARISATION 

It would be possible, no doubt, to name other 
directions in which we have need to direct our 
efforts if we are to succeed in upraising our 
level of personal life; but for our immediate 
purpose what has been said may be sufficient. 
Experience as teachers of others must have shewn 
us that far more is gained as a rule by concen- 
trating attention upon a few plain duties, than 
by setting out comprehensive schemes, which 
by their balanced completeness may satisfy the 
mind, but which through lack of definiteness fail 
to appeal to the conscience and influence the will. 
Penitence, and prayer, and the meditation which 
has for its object the increase of devotion to 
our Lord — these must produce far-reaching eff*ects 
upon our life and upon our ministry. 

But while it might not be wise to add to the 
list of duties, it may be of value that we should 
direct our thoughts to some of the dangers 

104 



Secularisation 105 

which specially beset the spiritual life of Clergy 
to-day. It is, of course, true that no mere 
avoidance of dangers can ever be enough to keep 
us in the way of highest attainment ; yet a clear 
recognition of the perils that surround us is of 
real use in helping us to walk more warily and 
resolutely in it. 

It is not an easy thing to single out such dangers 
as we should agree to consider the most serious and 
widespread at the present time. The attempt must 
be made therefore with some hesitation. Here 
again it may be sufficient to mention but three. 

The first place shall be given to the danger 
of secularisation; to the temptation, that is to 
say, which would lead us to devote ourselves to 
a variety of pursuits other than those which 
properly belong to us, to such an extent as to 
obscure our character and weaken our influence 
as spiritual leaders. 

Next we shall do well to think of the danger 
of over-occupation ; and under that head we 
shall include the risks which we incur when we 
persist in the attempt to do too many things 
even of the kind that may be rightly included 
in our proper sphere. 



106 Personal Life 

And, lastly, something must be said of de- 
pression^ the disposition to despair of ourselves 
and of others, which is often the penalty of a 
disregard of these earlier dangers, but which may 
also threaten the peace and well-being of those 
who have been the most successful in avoiding 
them. 

First, then, the danger of Secularisation. 

As we take note of what is going on around 
us, we cannot fail to be struck by the fact of a 
remarkable widening of the ordinary conceptions 
of public and individual duty. Never before 
has there been throughout society as a whole a 
keener or more sympathetic sense of the obliga- 
tions which bind class to class, and man to man. 
Never has there been a time when more hearts 
more readily responded to the appeals which are 
made by misery and wrong ; or when more hands 
were eager to * do something ' to improve the 
conditions and prospects of those who seem to 
be carrying an unequal share of the burdens of 
hardship and suffering. 

In the movement to alleviate and remedy the 
evils of ignorance and pauperism and disease, the 
Church has been anxious to take an active and a 



Secularisation 107 

leading part. Reading the problems of the age 
in the light of her inherited beliefs, she has been 
led to the most comprehensive views of the 
meaning of those beliefs, and of the whole pur- 
pose and scope of Christianity. Her message 
has been increasingly applied to phases and de- 
partments of human life and activity which had 
not been generally thought of as included in its 
range. The desire has grown stronger and 
stronger to prove that all interests, all occupa- 
tions, all recreations, so far as they were not 
actually wrong in themselves, were to be regarded 
as entitled to a place in the programme of the 
Church. 

With this broadening of the conception of the 
mission of the Church, there has come of necessity 
a widening of the sphere of work in which the 
Clergy are expected to engage. The large cul- 
ture, which is so valuable a part of their training, 
has made it possible for them to take their places 
freely and naturally in social efforts beside their 
fellows of the laity; the democratic tendency, 
which is everywhere felt, has given a further 
impulse to their inclination to enter sympa- 
thetically into all that in any way contributes 
to the life of the people: and, yet more, the 



108 Personal Life 

earnest desire to win those who have seemed to 
be least accessible to the influences of religion 
has prompted them to devote time and energy 
to the study of their problems, as well as to 
schemes for their comfort and even for their 
amusement. 

In any widening of understanding and sym- 
pathy we may heartily rejoice. It must be for 
good that the Gospel of the Incarnation is felt to 
be in the largest sense the Gospel of Life. It can 
only be matter for thankfulness whenever the 
clergy are foremost in urging the responsibilities 
which should weigh more heavily than they do 
upon all who have wealth and position : nor can 
they be too eager in welcoming efforts on behalf 
of those who are the least able to take care of 
themselves. 

It by no means follows however that, amid 
these causes for thankfulness, there may not be 
reasons for anxiety, and even for alarm. In our 
mixed life the evil stands ever at the side of the 
good : and we have continually to be on our 
guard against the ' defects of our qualities,' even 
when these are at their best. In this case what is 
to be feared is that the widening of which we 
have spoken is being gained at a very serious cost. 



Secularisation 109 

An artist and a clergyman were seated side 
by side, not long ago, at a London dinner-table. 
In the course of their conversation the artist 
said : ' Ours is a philanthropic age ; ours is not a 
religious age.' Generalisations are confessedly 
dangerous, and we might well demur to so sweep- 
ing a statement. No one of us would have let it 
pass altogether unchallenged; and yet there is 
probably not one of us but would feel compelled 
to admit that a measure of truth underlies it. 
And certainly a statement of this kind, coming 
from a thoughtful layman, is calculated to make 
us pause and consider whether there is not a real 
peril before us all in the direction in which things 
are moving so easily. 

The fear is lest, with the enlarging of the 
meaning of duty in one direction, there has been 
also a narrowing and lessening of its meaning in 
another, and that the very highest direction. 

The word Duty is on all lips. We are proud 
of our pride in it. But what do we com- 
monly mean by it? Is not the duty intended 
almost invariably that which a man owes to his 
fellow creatures; or possibly sometimes that 
which he owes to himself? How rarely is it the 
duty which he owes to his God ! Even when all 



110 Personal Life 

possible allowance has been made for the almost 
impenetrable reserve that characterises an English- 
man in regard to matters in which his intimate 
motives and feelings are involved, there are signs 
enough of a tendency which, if unchecked and un- 
corrected, can only lead to a gradual secularisation 
of aims and ideals. 

Unless the wisest of our teachers have been 
deceived, and unless the deepest lessons of history 
are to be distrusted, the end of philanthropy it- 
self will not be far distant when once philanthropy 
is allowed to usurp the place which belongs to 
religion. 

If the danger is real for others, we may be sure 
that it is real for us. We have already spoken 
of reasons which make it natural that the clergy 
should be inclined to throw themselves sympa- 
thetically into the philanthropic movements of 
the time: we might easily add to them. Our 
position as ofBcers of a national Church offers us 
a vantage ground for action. Many are glad to 
welcome our assistance and leadership. There is 
the feeling that such activity helps to make the 
Church popular. We are anxious, it may be, to 
rebut a charge of narrowness. We feel that 



Secularisation 111 

there is a gain in whatever brings us into living 
touch with the actual facts of ordinary experience. 
We see so perpetually the evils that are crying 
out for redress : and we have reason to know that 
we have gifts and qualifications which would 
enable us to deal effectively with them. 

The fact that we may thus easily be drawn 
into the current which is setting so strongly about 
us, makes it the more necessary to speak plainly 
of the effects which have followed, and are not 
unlikely still to follow, in the life and ministry of 
those who with excellent intentions yield them- 
selves unreservedly to the prevailing tendency. 

No one would think of denying that there 
are, as there have been in the past, remarkable 
examples to prove that it is possible for men 
endowed with exceptional vitality to throw them- 
selves into activities of the most varied kinds, and 
at the same time preserve their sense of propor- 
tion and with it the distinctive tone and character 
of the sacred office to which they were ordained. 
But then these are exceptional men. It is only 
too evident that, for the average man amongst us, 
such an attempt is more likely than not to lead to 
serious failure. 

Instances have occurred in which it is scarcely 



112 Personal Life 

too much to say that the priest and pastor has 
been merged and lost in the social leader and 
political reformer; or, more disastrous yet, in 
which he has descended to a level at which he has 
been regarded as little more than a successful 
provider of popular amusements. Even where 
things have stopped far short of this — and we 
freely admit that the extreme cases are rare — it 
has frequently happened that, in his anxiety to 
be forward in promoting schemes of practical 
benevolence, a clergyman has allowed himself to 
become immersed in affairs of the nature of the 
'serving of tables,' to the consequent neglect of 
the directly spiritual parts of his pastoral work. 

Nowhere can the process of secularisation be 
more clearly traced than in the preaching de- 
livered from our pulpits. The old-fashioned 
doctrinal and expository discourse might not 
be well suited to the needs or capacities of a 
modem audience, but it might be instructive for 
many of us if it were possible to have the judgment 
of some of our predecessors upon the hurried, 
disjointed, up-to-date deliverances which too 
often do duty for sermons to-day. 

The adopting of lay costume, and the abandon- 
ment of a certain gravity of demeanour, may seem 



Secularisation 113 

small things in themselves ; but they are not 
small things if they mean that, as the result of 
our desire to be ' all things to all men,' we have 
made it not more easy but more difficult for them 
to turn to us in the hour when they become con- 
scious of their need of the higher aid which it is 
our mission to bring them. 

The truth is that we have need constantly to 
go back to the first principles of our ministerial 
vocation, and to renew our sense of its purpose 
and aim. We should be greatly helped to do 
this were we to make it a practice to read care- 
fully from time to time the service which was 
used at our ordination as Priests. How plainly 
it set forth to us the expectations we were to 
form of the life-work opening before us. How 
good it is for us to compare those expectations 
with our actual experience ! 

Notice the three words on which marked 
emphasis is laid in the Exhortation addressed by 
the Bishop to the candidates. ' Dignity,** ' Diffi- 
culty,' ' Duty ' : these may fitly sound as watch- 
words in our ears. We dare not lower our 
conception of our responsibility as ' Messengers, 
Watchmen, and Stewards of the Lord.' It is 

H 



114 Personal Life 

necessary that we should often be reminded that 
it can be no light task to ' compass the doing of 
so weighty a work, pertaining to the salvation of 
man ' ; and that we may only hope to accomplish 
it as we ^ apply ourselves wholly to this one 
thing, and draw all our cares and studies this 
way.** The serious pondering of the Ordinal, 
with its solemn injunctions and no less solemn 
promises, would do much to ' print in our 
remembrance ' that our main concern after all is 
not the re-arranging of the social order, however 
powerfully we may contribute indirectly to this 
by our labour for the Church of God, and by our 
endeavours to ' set forwards quietness, peace, and 
love among all Christian people."* 

The Ordinal tells us that if we are to ' wax 
riper and stronger' in our ministry, it must be 
' by daily reading and weighing of the Scriptures."* 
We have already considered the necessity for a 
continued study of the Gospels. We may add to 
what has been said that there are special reasons 
why, at this particular time, we should try to get 
a just view of the attitude which our Lord 
assumed towards social questions. The idea has 
become widely prevalent that this attitude was 



Secularisation 115 

very much more that of the modern reformer 
than has ordinarily been recognised by the Church 
in the past ; and all of us know how readily an 
idea that is popularly accepted may possess the 
minds even of thoughtful students in a degree 
greatly in excess of the measure of truth which it 
represents. That in this case the popular view 
may be seriously challenged, and that a reaction 
from it is not unlikely to set in before long, may 
perhaps be gathered from such utterances as the 
following, coming to us as they do from very 
different quarters. 

In a valuable work just published, Professor 
Peabody of Harvard writes : ' There was 
political oppression about Him to be remedied, 
there were social unrighteousness and iniquity to 
be condemned ; but Jesus does not fling Himself 
into these social issues of His time. He moves 
through them with a strange tranquillity, not as 
one who is indifferent to them, but as one whose 
eye is fixed on an end in which these social 
problems will find their own solution. 

*In short, Jesus will not be diverted by the 
demand for a social teaching from the special 
message of spiritual renewal which He is called 
to bring. In many of the processes of applied 



116 Personal Life 

science, there are certain results known as by- 
products, which are thrown off or precipitated on 
the way to the special result desired. It may 
happen that these by-products are of the utmost 
value ; but none the less they are obtained by 
the way. Such a by-product is the social teach- 
ing of Jesus. It was not the end toward which 
His mission was directed ; it came about as He 
fulfilled His mission. To reconstruct the Gospels 
so as to make them primarily a programme of 
social reform is to mistake the by-product for the 
end specifically sought, and in the desire to find 
a place for Jesus within the modern age, to forfeit 
that which gives Him His place in all ages.' ^ 

Again later he says : ' The teaching of Jesus 
. . . recognises that the problem of adjusting 
social environment must be a new problem with 
each new age ; it concerns itself, therefore, with 
the making of persons who shall be fit to deal 
with the environment which each new age in its 
turn presents.** ^ 

Our other quotation shall be from the remark- 
able lectures recently delivered by Professor 
Harnack to the students of the university at 

* Jems Christ and the Social Question, pp. 78 f . 
a Ibid,, p. 113. 



Secularisation 117 

Berlin. This is how he speaks of the relation 
of the Gospel to ' questions of mundane develop- 
ment ** : — 

' What the Gospel says is this : Whoever you 
may be, and whatever your position, whether 
bondman or free, whether fighting or at rest, 
your real task in life is always the same* There 
is only one relation and one idea which you must 
not violate, and in the face of which all others 
are only transient wrappings and vain show ; to 
be a child of God and a citizen of His kingdom 
and to exercise love. How you are to maintain 
yourself in this life on earth, and in what way 
you are to serve your neighbour, is left to you 
and your own liberty of action. This is what 
the Apostle Paul understood by the Gospel, and 
I do not believe that he misunderstood it.' ^ 

It is possible that most of us would wish to 
modify these statements in some particulars be- 
fore adopting them as our own ; but perhaps 
the very decisiveness of them may make them 
the more useful as a corrective of exaggerated 
representations on the opposite side. The work 
of the Church is still that of her Master. While 
far from indifferent to matters which affect 

^ What is Christianity? p. 116. 



118 Personal Life 

material well-being, she may never lose sight of 
a further goal. ^Man doth not live by bread 
alone.' The kingdom is 'not of this world.** 
We want better houses for the people ; but we 
want still more — as it has been aptly put — 
* better people for the houses.'' As clergy we are 
to welcome most cordially all that is being done 
to improve the social conditions about us, but we 
may rightly feel that the fact of such improve- 
ment makes it not the less but the more essential 
that our witness for the spiritual order should be 
as emphatic and convincing as possible. 

It may help us if we remember that the clergy 
are, not perhaps most liked, but certainly most 
respected, when it is recognised that they know 
and do their proper work. It might also be 
good for us to bear in mind that, whilst men of 
all occupations greatly value our sympathy, we 
are not to conclude that they wish for our inter- 
ference, least of all in cases where an exact 
understanding of complicated facts and nicely 
adjusted conditions is indispensable if a just 
judgment is to be formed. 



Hitherto we have been thinking about the 



Secularisation 119 

danger of secularisation as it presents itself in 
more public ministrations and in connection with 
certain well-marked tendencies of the present 
time. Some words must be added upon another 
aspect of the matter. The peril may approach 
us on quite different ground, and when we are 
even less likely to be on our guard against it. 

Here we are concerned with a side of the 
question which is by no means exclusively 
modern. All writers on the spiritual life have 
felt it to be necessary to give warnings against 
the possible effects of a too unreserved mixing 
in society and a too free participation in its 
pleasures and pursuits. The need for such 
counsels is not less now than in former times, 
and certainly the difficulty both of giving and 
using them is as great to-day as it can ever have 
been. 

Nothing could be more hopeless than any 
attempt to draw a line and say. This or that is 
the limit which may never be overpassed. It 
would be most undesirable, even were it possible, 
that any uniformity of type should be established 
amongst us. It would be a serious thing if the 
links were to be weakened which have united the 
English clergy with the general life of society 



120 Personal Life 

and of the country. Probably the wisest teachers 
would be the least disposed to lay down rules, 
and the most ready to concede the largest 
possible amount of personal liberty. 

There can be few of us who would not feel 
strongly in sympathy with such words as these, 
spoken some years ago by the late Dean 
Vaughan in one of his addresses to younger 
clergy :— 

' It is a question often asked, and never to be 
hastily, or perhaps conclusively, answered — How 
much ought a clergyman to enter into society ? 
There is one answer which is easily given, and 
which satisfies the spiritual haste and indolence 
and selfishness of many — Refrain ! And there is 
something in the experience of all persons who 
would lead a godly life, which responds to that 
counsel. Who has not come away from a large 
and promiscuous gathering, from a dinner or an 
evening party, with a deep consciousness that it 
has been time wasted, or worse? How natural 
to draw the inference ! For me, at least, this is 
an unprofitable thing. Others, better men than 
I am, more devoted, more consistent, may do this 
thing safely or even with advantage; for me, it is 
perilous — it is injurious. 



Secularisation 121 

* Yet let us reflect for a moment what this says. 
It says that our religion will not bear touching 
or handling — that it can live and breathe only in 
solitude ; that for us life is not redeemed, only a 
way is made out of it into another. . . . 

'It is the experience of many who have not 
seen their way to this isolation, that when they 
have gone into society with an earnest prayer for 
blessing, they have found, ere the evening closed, 
some opportunity which would otherwise have 
had no existence, for giving and receiving good — 
it may be, in the privacy which so often waits 
upon publicity, the unheard discourse with a 
casual neighbour whose soul is suddenly opened 
to one who bears in his face the attribute of 
' helper ' — they have found reason, thus or other- 
wise, to rejoice that they had not wrapped them- 
selves in the unsociable mantle of a religion all 
for itself — they have felt that henceforth they 
must pray more, and trust more, and expect 
more, and then God will more largely bless — 
they will reproach themselves, not others, if they 
are often frustrated and disappointed in such 
intercourse — they will feel, nevertheless, that 
neighbourhood is relationship, and that they 
have no right to call common or irreligious 



122 Personal Life 

that interchange of kindliness which God has 
cleansed.'^ 

Side by side with this noble utterance let us 
set another from an earlier leader of a different 
school. In a letter written by John Keble to a 
friend newly ordained we find him saying : — 

^I do not think the glory of God best pro- 
moted by a rigid abstinence from amusements, 
except they be sinful in themselves, or carried to 
excess, or in some other way ministering occasion 
to sin. . . . Nor can I well imagine any greater 
service to society than is rendered by him, who 
submits to its common routine, though some- 
thing wearisome, for this very reason: lest he 
should offend his neighbours by unnecessary 
rigour. 

' Besides, if our neighbours'* pleasures be harm- 
less, and we have it in our power to increase 
them, without breaking any law of God or man, 
is it quite agreeable to the spirit of Christian 
Charity to refuse to do so ? Is it quite agree- 
able to such passages as "Rejoice with them 
that do rejoice""; or to our Saviom^'s example in 
working the miracle in Cana, and in submitting 
to the reproach of being a man gluttonous and 

^ Addresses to Young Clergymen^ pp. Ill f. 



Secularisation 123 

a wine-bibber, rather than offend unthinking 
sinners by too much preciseness? Is it quite 
agreeable to the general spirit of the Gospel? 
which directs us, even when we fast, not to be 
of a sad countenance, and which, next to inculcat- 
ing the necessity of a thorough inward change, 
seems anxious to discourage any violent outward 
one, except when it is a plain duty. . . . Almost 
every time I look into the New Testament, I feel 
the more convinced, that the more quietly and 
calmly one sets about one's duty, and the less 
one breaks through established customs, always 
supposing them innocent in themselves, the more 
nearly does one act according to the great 
Exemplar there proposed.' ^ 

We dare not overlook the fact, however, that 
this liberty of the Gospel has its dangers. All 
liberty calls for care in the using. Whilst we 
may fully agree that a policy of ascetic absten- 
tion is no true policy, we may nevertheless feel 
the need of adopting precautions, and even of 
placing restrictions upon ourselves, lest that 

^ Letters of Spiritual Counsel^ xii. This was written as early 
as 1817. It is the more interesting, therefore, to note that the 
same view is restated in a letter (xiii.) bearing date 1860. 



124 Personal Life 

which is lawful and beneficial in itself should 
prove to be an injury to ourselves and to others. 

It is not a little significant that Mr Ruskin, 
when speaking of the personal life of the artist, 
has said that he should be a man who is fitted 
to move in the best society and who yet ' keeps 
out of if! We may easily grasp the meaning 
of such a remark, even though we may believe 
that its author did not intend it to be taken 
quite literally. And, surely, if it be true that 
the man whose function it is to minister to the 
higher tastes of his generation has need to be 
warned against the possible effects upon himself 
of surroundings and associations which might 
distract him from a single-eyed pursuit of his 
ideals; it must be not less true that he also is 
bound to be most watchful who has been called 
and set apart that he may witness to realities 
' which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,' and the 
knowledge of which is to be gained and retained 
by the employment of instincts and faculties far 
more delicate and liable to be blunted than even 
the finest perceptions of sense. 

If we look for guidance to the example of our 
Lord, we are struck by the way in which the 
years and days of His public and social ministry 



Secularisation 125 

were balanced, so to speak, by spaces of silence 
and retirement. Our peril lies in the tempta- 
tion to suppose that we can have much of the 
one with but scant provision for the other. 
We need the preparation of solitude if we are 
to carry influence with us as we pass out into the 
stream of life.^ 

Moreover a certain skill and wisdom is required 
if we are to exert our influence with the best 
effect. We may not assume, as we are perhaps 
inclined to do, that such moral and spiritual 
force as we possess will make itself felt inde- 
pendently of any special intention on our part. 
It is often said that the greatest influence is uncon- 
scious influence. Possibly this general statement 
admits of more qualification than is commonly 
supposed. 

Archbishop Benson, when speaking to one of 
his junior clergy on the subject of the influence 
which is to be exercised through social inter- 
course, warned him that the nature of this in- 
fluence in any particular instance would greatly 

^ * Certe nee ipsi actioni expedit consideratione non prae- 
veniri.* * Memento proinde, non dico semper, non dico saepe, 
sed vel interdum reddere te ipsum tibi.' — St Bernard, De 
Consid. i. 5. 



126 Personal Life 

depend upon the character of the footing upon 
which the acquaintance began. There were, he 
said, in his own case persons with whom it was 
always easy and natural to speak of the highest 
topics ; and there were others with whom it had 
never ceased to be difficult to introduce them. 
The difference he believed to be due to the fact 
that with the first the higher ground had been 
taken at the outset, while with the others this 
had not been so. This experience is one which 
may furnish matter for reflection to us all. 

Certainly the wisest of our laity would pray us 
to see to it that nothing should induce us to 
lower our standards of the priestly life. They 
look to us to help them in ways in which they 
cannot be helped by one of themselves. They 
call us ' reverend ' : it is for us to take care, in 
all simplicity and with no affectation or assump- 
tion, that we are such men as they can highly 
esteem. 

We may learn a great deal by carefully mark- 
ing the verdicts which are passed upon a ministry 
that has ended. It is most instructive to observe 
with what accuracy its main lines and character- 
istics are usually discerned, and to note how 
surely the aims and successes are wont to be 



Secularisation 127 

appraised at their real worth, when for a moment 
the presence of death seems to have sobered the 
judgment and made men look with other eyes 
than those with which they commonly regard 
the events that are happening about them. At 
these times even the least religiously minded are 
able to recognise, and are not slow to reverence, 
the life-work of the man who has made it his 
chief business to lift them nearer to God. 

It is not easy to say how in a particular in- 
stance the danger of which we have been thinking 
is to be met and overcome. We may not pre- 
sume to decide for one another. Each man's 
work will be judged by his Master. Only let 
us keep in our ears the warnings of that Master 
as to the salt which loses its savour through a 
too continuous contact with the earth, and let 
us remember how again and again He set it 
before His disciples as their aim that they should 
he 'i/n'' the world but ' not of it. 



Note I 

In an Ordination sermon preached in Salisbury 
Cathedral, in 1876, Dean Church spoke thus to 
the candidates : — 

' It is much indeed, if there were nothing more, 
to be members of so illustrious a public body as 
the clergy of England; to be the inheritors of 
such a history, to be the guardians of the moral 
interests of so great a nation. But though you 
are this, you are more ; and woe to you if you 
forget it. Besides all this, you are the servants 
and ministers of the Crucified. He on high is 
your Master, and to Him your account has to 
be made. It is for His purposes that you are 
chosen : it is His gifts, His word, His sacraments, 
that you have to convey to men. 

'You may, indeed, in a wonderful and in- 
creasing measure, be the ministers of the highest 
earthly blessings to men: but it is the blessings 
of the world unseen, blessings for weary and 
endangered souls, blessings for those who have 
no other hope left them, blessings purchased by 
the blood of the Eternal Sacrifice, and running 
on through death into an everlasting life — it is 

X28 



Notes 129 

with these that you are specially charged. Do 
nothing, admit nothing, in the way of employ- 
ment, in the way of recreation, in what you allow 
to yourselves, which shall confuse and obscure 
the thought that yours is a spiritual ministry 
and stewardship held direct from Jesus Christ, 
and that you, as He had, have to do with souls.' 
— Human Life and its Conditions^ pp. 185 f. 



Note II 

' Gentlemen, when a man grows older and sees 
more deeply into life, he does not find, if he 
possesses any inner world at all, that he is ad- 
vanced by the external march of things, by the 
" progress of civilisation.'' Nay, he feels himself, 
rather, where he was before, and forced to seek 
the sources of strength which his forefathers also 
sought. He is forced to make himself a native 
of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the 
Eternal, the kingdom of Love ; and he comes to 
understand that it was only of this kingdom that 
Jesus Christ desired to testify, and he is grateful 
to Him for it.' — Adolf Harnack, What is Christi- 
anity? p. 121, 

I 



CHAPTER VII 

OVER- OCCUPATION 

The danger of which we have been thinking is 
a most serious one; but there is another against 
which we have not less need to be on our guard. 
Indeed, it is probably not too much to say that 
in it we may find the explanation of the larger 
part of the failure to attain to the highest ideals, 
whether in our own lives or in those for whose 
progress we are responsible. When we trace the 
indifference, the apathy, the lack of spiritual 
energy, so noticeable in the world and in the 
Church, to their ultimate source, we are led to 
the conclusion that this source is not really hard 
to discover, and that it admits of being described 
in language which is perfectly plain. The symp- 
toms are simply those of exhaustion; and the 
exhaustion is due to the fact that the vital 
powers, interests, and sympathies have been too 
constantly stimulated and too indiscriminately 

drawn upon. 

130 



Over- Occupation 131 

To take an illustration. A great deal of the 
inability to believe, and the indisposition to 
make the efforts required by religion, which is 
often accounted for as the effect of the unsettle- 
ment produced by scientific thought, should in 
all probability be regarded as traceable to this 
cause of which we are now to speak. 

There are some brave, clear words written 
by Dr Pritchard, the Oxford professor, on this 
matter which deserve to be carefully noted and 
remembered. In answer to the question, 'Is it 
true that the pursuit of Science has any inherent 
tendency towards religious scepticism.?' he gave 
it as his firm conviction that, 'It is preoccupa- 
tion of mind^ rather than science, which is, and 
ever has been, the prolific parent of scepticism 
and of indifference in religion ; ' and he went 
on to ask, ' Are not the preoccupations of high 
position, the preoccupations of ambition, of 
literature, of money -getting and of money - 
spending, of conceit, of sensual habits, and even 
of idleness, at least as unfriendly to the hearty 
acceptance of the Christian revelation, as are 
the preoccupations of scientific pursuits ?'i 

^ Occasional Thoughts of an Astronomer on Nature and Reve- 
lation^ pp. 10 f . 



132 Personal Life 

The same thing, in effect, was said in a no 
less striking way by the late Mr. R. H. Hutton, 
the editor of the Spectator, He was deploring 
' the meagre amount of life which remains to be 
thrown into the search for spiritual truth after 
all the other excitements of life have been pro- 
vided for.' ^ There is now,"* he insisted, 'no 
adequate economy of human strength for the 
higher objects of life, too much a great deal 
being lavished on its petty interests.' 'If men 
come to Christ with exhausted natures they will 
never know what there is in Him. . . . No doubt 
Christianity offers a new life of its own, and an 
inexhaustible spring of that life ; but it offers it 
only to those who can give a life for a life, who 
can give up the whole mind and heart that a new 
mind and a new heart may be substituted for 
them.' 'A generation, of which the most im- 
pressive characteristic is its spiritual fatigue, will 
never be truly Christian till it can husband its 
energy better, and consent to forego many petty 
interests that it may not forego the religion of 
the Cross.' -^ 

1 See the article reprinted in As^pects of Religious and 
Scientific Thought, pp. 21 f. 



Over- Occupation 133 

These testimonies are of great value, coming as 
they do from men of our own time who have had 
unusual opportunities of forming a judgment as 
to the temper of their age. But we may go back 
to much earlier and higher authority, and find 
the same moral enforced by One who spoke for 
human nature in every age. 

It is more than likely that already there has 
flashed upon our memories the recollection of our 
Lord"'s first parable of the Sower and the Seed. 
Of all the parables none is more calculated to 
arrest the attention of those who to-day are seek- 
ing guidance as to the best means of making 
progress in spiritual life. None certainly is more 
surprisingly in line with the direction taken by 
our latest thinking, or more closely in touch 
with our needs and our difiiculties. 

Religion, as it is set forth in this parable, is a 
strangely simple thing. Its beginnings are from 
God. Good influences, impressions, suggestions, 
inspirations, come to us- — as the terms in which 
we describe them imply — from a source outside 
and above ourselves. They are as seeds scattered 
upon the soil of our nature. If we may venture 
upon a simple retranslation, which would bring 
the old language almost startlingly into accord 



134 Personal Life 

with our most recent modes of thought and ex- 
pression, we might say that they are germs with 
which the spiritual atmosphere about us is 
charged. 

But the fact that they come to us is only half 
the truth. If it is certain that ' we do not make 
our thoughts," it is equally certain that Hhey 
grow in us."* They come to us, and they become 
part of us — conditioned by their association with 
us, strengthening with our strength and develop- 
ing with our development. They grow in us 
into convictions, into actions, into habits, into 
character, into destiny. Thus it is that the seed 
is ' the word of the kingdom,*' carrying with it 
the potentiality and the promise of all that is 
highest in human life, both here and hereafter. 

This, which is the general teaching of the 
parable, is the preparation for the particular 
lessons which follow. The religious life has its 
beginnings from God. Its progress is largely 
dependent upon ourselves. There are accord- 
ingly conditions which must be fulfilled by us, 
in proportion to the fulfilment of which will be 
the growth unto perfection. These conditions, 
as we have them stated, are of the most elemen- 
tary kind. 



Over- Occupation 135 

In the first place, the seed must get in ; it 
must meet with a welcome, and be permitted to 
win an entrance into mind and heart. In the 
next place, it must get down; it must be laid 
hold of by the deeper parts of the nature, until 
it has penetrated the conscience and taken its 
place among the principles which shape the 
thoughts and guide the will. Lastly, it must 
get room. Space must be secured for it, so that 
it shall not be overshadowed and starved by 
any rival growths. The other conditions might 
be complied with, and yet the results be sadly 
disappointing, if this final condition were to 
remain unfulfilled. 

It is the insistence upon this final condition 
that brings us face to face with the danger 
against which we have such special need to be 
on our watch to-day. Here, from the lips of our 
Lord Himself, is the very warning which the 
writers whom we have previously quoted urged 
us to consider. How much do we not owe to 
the form in which His lesson is conveyed ? How 
easy it is to see the force of truth thus luminously 
illustrated. The facts are there all obvious 
before our eyes. The soil of our being can 



136 Personal Life 

supply the needed sustenance to but a limited 
number of growths. The attempt to include 
more than can be healthily maintained must 
prove injurious to them all ; and, in the stress 
of the competition, the most delicate and sensitive 
of the seedlings will naturally fare the worst. 

How plain then is our duty when we are 
called upon to advise. When persons come to 
us and tell us, as they continually do, that their 
faith and hope have become weakened and dim, 
and that their hold upon the unseen is feeble and 
faltering ; when they complain that it is only 
with the greatest difficulty that they can give 
their attention for any length of time to spiritual 
things, while all other interests seem to have 
more power to occupy their thoughts and enlist 
their sympathies, it ought not to be difficult for 
us to see what course we should follow. 

In a large majority of such cases the right 
prescription is a simple one. We have but to 
say : ' Your life is too crowded, you have 
allowed too many interests to enter in and 
absorb your vital strength ; too many plants 
are struggling for existence in the garden of 
your nature. It is simply another case of " no 
room to live."** You will have to thin out. You 



Over- Occupation 1 37 

must see to it that the good seed gets its proper 
chance. Reduce the number of excitements and 
engrossments, make more free spaces for stillness 
and quiet thought, and see if you do not soon 
begin to feel the gain in the strengthening of 
what is best in your life.' 

But here, as always, before we can hope to get 
our counsel attended to, we must have gained 
the wisdom and the courage to apply it to our- 
selves. We may not suppose that we need it 
less than others. It is quite likely that we need 
it more ; and this for the very reason that the 
conflicting interests in our case are not so readily 
to be distinguished according to their characters, 
whether secular or religious. We have indeed 
temptations to yield to distractions which would 
draw us away from higher tasks into activities 
which lie outside our proper sphere. Of these 
we have spoken in the previous chapter. In 
regard to these, as has been admitted, the line 
is not to be easily drawn ; but the difficulty of 
discrimination becomes immensely increased when 
the selection of interests and occupations has to 
be attempted, not without, but within the depart- 
ments for which we are directly responsible. 



138 Personal Life 

How familiar the problem sounds as we begin 
to describe it ! Work, as ever, has resulted in 
more work. The demands upon us have gone 
on increasing. Engagements thicken. There 
are people to be visited, services to be taken, 
sermons and addresses to be prepared, meetings 
to be attended, appeals to be issued, letters to 
be answered. And there is ' no time,' as we say, 
for careful study, for devotional reading, for the 
daily offices, or for patient intercession. A general 
restlessness has entered the life, we find it increas- 
ingly difficult to be still; and with it all the growth 
of the spirit is retarded. Though many things 
are done, we are painfully aware that but little is 
really accomplished. 

No doubt a certain amount of ordering and 
regulating would in many instances do much to 
remedy the evil. Even to write down on a slip 
of paper at the beginning of the day an outline 
of the work to be attempted in it, might be 
of considerable service in securing reasonable 
arrangement and consequent economy of strength, 
not to speak of the relief from the strain of 
a perpetual uncertainty as to what should be 
undertaken next. 

But with some of us a treatment of a more 



Over- Occupation 139 

drastic sort is required. Before regulation can 
usefully begin there must be a change which is 
tantamount to revolution. We must determine 
that, whatever happens, it shall be ' First things 
first.' The highest interests must have the 
foremost place in our lives. The spirit must be 
secured its close times for uninterrupted com- 
muning with the sources of its strength. The 
hour of meditation must be protected as men 
were wont to guard the well in the fortress. 
The mind must be braced and refreshed by in- 
tercourse with the best thought of the present 
and the past. And for the rest, the watchword 
must be multum non multa. We must simply 
decline, with whatever sorrow, to undertake more 
things than we can hope to do well. 

^Mastery,' said Lord Acton, in his inaugural 
lecture at Cambridge, ^is acquired by resolved 
limitation."* 

Dr Liddon used to tell how, at the outset of 
his ministerial career, when, as he put it, he ' was 
in danger of becoming a popular preacher,' he 
had received from Dr Pusey a piece of advice 
which had been to him of the utmost value. It 
was this : ' Limit your work.' 

It may sound paradoxical to say, Limit your 



140 Personal Life 

work, that you may extend your influence; but 
the principle involved is a true one. It is quality 
and not quantity that tells. The work done by 
the worker in a healthful condition of mind and 
spirit, calmed and sustained by the consciousness 
of the Divine approval and guidance, which in- 
evitably disappears in an atmosphere of hurry 
and bustle, is the work that is really fruitful of 
results that remain. 

Let it not be imagined that such limitation of 
work will open the door to idleness. It would be 
more true to say that it is the most certain way 
of deliverance from it. Possibly, if the truth 
were known, it would be seen that much of the 
activity of to-day is in reality the efiect of indo- 
lence. The line of least resistance is that which 
we are naturally disposed to take. We find it 
much easier to employ our bodily powers than 
to exert our intellectual faculties; and most of 
all do we shrink from the eflbrt involved in the 
use of our souls. How many of us who are 
perpetually saying that we have 'no time' to 
think, or to pray, would be more likely to do 
either if we were set down in the depths of the 
country.? Verily there is an indolence which 



Over- Occupation 141 

disguises itself from itself under the cloak of 
untiring activity. 

Nor need we be greatly afraid lest such a 
limitation of work — perhaps we should rather 
say of works — should prove to be prejudicial to 
our parishes. Many a parish would be greatly 
the gainer if its clergy were less ready, and 
indeed eager, to do everything themselves. 

We are continually being told of the slowness 
with which lay-help is developed amongst us; 
and, as often as not, in the same breath it is 
said that the clergy are having the life crushed 
out of them by persistent overwork. The fault 
may in a measure be that of the laity, but must 
we not acknowledge that in a large number of 
instances it has been the clergy themselves who 
have been chiefly to blame ? 

How many a time it would have been good if 
some one could have gone to the over-occupied 
parish priest, who was on his feet rushing hither 
and thither from morning to night, and have 
said: ^Brother, you forget that there is such a 
thing as "the sacred principle of delegation.'*'' 
It is sometimes true to say. If you want a thing 
well done, don'^t do it yourself ! It may cost you 
not a little to train some one else to do it, and 



142 Personal Life 

there is a certain amount of distress in seeing 
the thing done not exactly as you would have 
done it : but by giving the work to another you 
would summon fresh powers into action, powers 
which in all probability would continue to operate 
long after you are gone. If you go on as you 
are going, you will be inflicting a serious wrong 
upon others, as well as an injury upon yourself." 

Who does not know of cases where the weak 
health of a vicar has actually proved to have 
been a blessing in disguise? The people have 
rallied to help him by undertaking a score of 
things which, had he been more robust, he would 
probably have thought it easiest to do for him- 
self. The result has been that new interests 
have entered their lives, and given a new direc- 
tion to their thoughts and energies ; while he has 
become, far more effectively than might other- 
wise have been possible, the head and the heart 
of the parochial organisation. 

Would indeed that we had all of us more 
courage to believe that whatever makes a clergy- 
man a more vitally powerful man, capable of 
being and doing his very best, must ultimately 
tend to the highest well-being of his parish. If 



Over- Occupation 143 

we really believed this, we should be more alive 
than we are to the danger of being much occupied 
in ^many things'; and should realise that no 
array of statistics to be tabulated in a year- 
book can compensate for the lack of the ^one 
thing needful ' — the growth and development of 
personal spiritual life. 



Note 

Since writing the above I have met with a 
valuable corroboration of what I have ventured 
to say by the late Sir J. R. Seeley. 

' Not only in the Church,"' he maintained, ' but 
among the teaching class at the Universities and 
in schools, as idleness was the besetting sin of the 
last age, industry is the besetting sin of the pre- 
sent ; or, more correctly, the idleness has been 
succeeded by a merely external and superficial 
industry. Our conversion seems to have begun 
not at the heart but at the extremities. The 
hands and feet have thrown off their listlessness 
and move to and fro indefatigably ; the tongue, 
throat, and lungs tax themselves prodigiously ; 
but the change will be more in form than in 
substance till it penetrates to the brain and will. 
In all the professions a man*'s first duty now is to 
renounce the ambition of becoming distinguished 
for activity ; the temptation chiefly to be avoided 
is that of undertaking more than he can do in 
first-rate style. 

' The quality of work must be improved, and 
for that end, if necessary, the quantity reduced. 
A higher and calmer sort of activity must be ar- 
rived at — economy in energy, expenditure without 
waste, zeal without haste.' — Lectu/res and Essays^ 
' The Church as a Teacher of Morality,' pp. 282 f. 

J44 



CHAPTER VIII 

DEPRESSION 

Great are the blessings, and great is the power 
of cheerfulness. ' Give me the man,' wrote 
Carlyle, ' who sings at his work." 

If it be the case, and none of us would be 
likely to question it, that a happy contentment 
adds charm and value to all other sorts of labour, 
such a disposition is specially to be desired in the 
case of those who are appointed to minister in 
holy things. If it be true, as Faber has declared, 
that ' melancholy in a creature is a kind of 
injurious reflection upon the Creator,' how pre- 
judicial must habitual sadness be on the part 
of men whose mission it is to witness for God 
and to win others to serve Him ? Could 
anything be more calculated to counteract the 
effect of their message than an impression that 
they are themselves disappointed, or even em- 
bittered, by their experiences of life ? They of 
all men should, in the well-known phrase of the 

U5 



146 Personal Life 

good Bishop Hackett, ' serve God and be 
cheerful/ 

So much we should all of us find it easy to 
say; yet, at the same time, we might rightly feel 
that the statement of the case would scarcely 
be complete if left to stand in this unqualified 
shape. There is need to distinguish, and to 
define our meaning more carefully, for while we 
may be ready enough to allow that a cheerful 
bearing is, as a rule, most attractive, and of the 
greatest assistance in commending a Gospel of 
glad tidings, there are other aspects of the matter 
which ought not to be ignored. We may assent 
to the general proposition that it is desirable to 
avoid the feeling and appearance of sadness as 
we go about our work, and yet we may have 
considerable doubt as to how far it is always 
possible to do this; and further still, as to 
whether it can, under all circumstances, be right 
to attempt it. 

Was there not truth, as well as cleverness, in 
the reply of the bishop who had been posed by 
a notorious sceptic with the question, ' Why is 
it that all the Christians that I meet are so 
flfielancholy ? '' Said the bishop, 'The sight of 



Depression 147 

you, Mr. , would make any Christian 

melancholy/ 

Had not the author of the once popular 
Proverbial Philosophy some reason on his side 
when he wrote, ' No man can look on the world, 
and be both happy and good "* ? Is there not a 
happiness which is largely the result of shallow- 
ness ? 

Dare we proceed on the assumption that to a 
Christian believer this life of ours presents no 
difficulties of the graver sort ? Would it not, 
on the contrary, be more true to maintain that 
to a Christian the disorders and enigmas of the 
world are perplexing and embarrassing just in 
proportion as his heart is tender, and his zeal for 
the Divine honour is great ? 

Is it not the fact that the idealist — be he 
artist, or poet, or prophet — by the very con- 
stitution of his nature, is more liable to alterna- 
tions and revulsions of feeling than are others 
whose gifts are of a different order ? If he has 
his hill-top moments of vision, he has also his 
descents into the shadows. He is haunted by 
conceptions of beauty, or goodness, or truth, 
which he imperfectly apprehends, and yet more 
imperfectly expresses ; and the sense of his failure 



148 Personal Life 

brings with it often the very keenest distress. 
But is it not a noble pain ? Is there not a 
blessedness which belongs to those who ' mourn/ 
and to those who experience the ' hunger and 
thirst ' of the spirit ? 

Was it not the ' Man of Sorrows ' who went 
about doing good as none other ever did ? And 
are we not constantly saying that suffering is that 
which equips and qualifies for the most difficult 
tasks ; that it is only through suffering that we 
can hope to gain the delicacy of sympathy which 
is essential to those who are to minister to the 
wounded of heart and of soul ? 

Clearly then, as we said, there is need to 
distinguish. We may not decide off hand that 
all sadness is a wrong or an unprofitable sadness. 
There is a Christian distress at the sight of the 
world as it is ; a sorrow which is the evidence not 
of death in the soul, but of life. Such a distress, 
we may even make bold to affirm, so far from 
repelling those who witness it, has in it a strange 
power to arrest men''s attention, and to win them 
to seriousness of thought and endeavour. 

We must be careful not to cast any slight 
upon the noble and unselfish sorrow which has 
such good reasons to give for itself, and which 



Depression 149 

has seldom been entirely absent from the lives of 
the greatest thinkers and workers. Such sorrow 
has in it nothing of the bitterness of despair ; 
indeed, not the least wonderful thing about it 
is, that it is wont to be accompanied by a deep 
and mysterious joy. 

It is not then of this sorrow that we are to 
think as we proceed to consider the last of the 
dangers which we shall attempt to describe. 
There is a sadness of very different origin and 
character, which has no such purifying or arrest- 
ing power. It arises not from the presence, but 
from the absence of ideals. It owes nothing of 
its poignancy to solicitude for the Divine honour. 
It contributes nothing that can be of value to 
the service of man. Such is the sadness which is 
properly described as Depression, 

The symptoms of it are unhappily too familiar 
to us all. It shews itself in moodiness and indis- 
position for effort, in a morbid self-consciousness 
and weary dissatisfaction with persons and cir- 
cumstances. ' Heaviness, gloom, coldness, sullen- 
ness, distaste and desultory sloth in work and 
prayer, joylessness, and thanklessness — do we not 
know something of the threatenings, at least, of a 



150 Personal Life 

mood in which these meet ? The mood of days 
. . . when, as one has said, "everything that 
everybody does seems inopportune and out of 
good taste " ; days when the things that are true 
and honest, just and pure, lovely and of good 
report, seem to have lost all loveliness and glow 
and charm of hue, and look as dismal as a flat 
country in the drizzling mist of an east wind; 
days when we might be cynical if we had a little 
more energy in us; when all enthusiasm and 
confidence of hope, all sense of a Divine impulse, 
flags out of our work ; when the schemes which 
we have begun look stale and poor and unattrac- 
tive as the scenery of an empty stage by daylight ; 
days when there is nothing that we like to do — 
when without anything to complain of, nothing 
stirs so readily in us as complaint."' ^ 

Some of us are, of course, more disposed by 
temperament to fall into depression than others, 
but there can be few of us who have not cause to 
dread the miseries of it. We can scarcely take 
too serious a view of the danger, and of our 
responsibility in regard to it. 

What we may hope to be able to say about 
precautions and remedies will probably seem, 
^ Bishop Paget, The Spirit of Discipline, pp. 69 f , 



Depression 151 

when it is written down, to be bald and in- 
adequate ; but nevertheless it will be worth while 
to gather together some of the counsels and sug- 
gestions which have been offered from time to 
time, and which we should probably think it only 
natural to offer, if the advice were intended for 
others rather than for ourselves. 

To begin, then, with ordinary and elementary 
considerations that bear upon the subject. A 
great deal depends simply upon bodily health. 
We who labour with our brains have more need 
to concern ourselves about principles and rules 
of diet than those have who work with their 
hands. It may make a great difference, too, 
whether the study in which we do our thinking is 
a room that gets a fair share of the sunshine. 
Then it must be remembered that the clergy 
have no more right than others to imagine that 
they can go on ignoring that necessity of our nature 
which underlies the appointment of one day's rest 
in seven, and expect to escape with impunity. It 
is extremely difficult to secure the weekly break, 
and we shall only succeed in doing it if we regard 
the duty as one which we owe to those for whom 
we work as much as to ourselves. 



152 Personal Life 

Passing to intellectual conditions, we cannot 
shut our eyes to the fact that the mind has its 
needs no less than the body. It also demands 
recreation and reinvigoration. With some of us 
the relief and renewal are most successfully sought 
in one way, with some in another. Congenial 
social intercourse, a good novel, or it may be a 
good play, afford what is evidently the best 
means of healthful unbending to many; while 
those who are differently constituted, are equally 
the better for the tonic effect of a really stiff 
book on some subject the furthest removed from 
any which ordinarily occupies their thoughts. 

For all of us it would seem to be essential that 
we should from time to time withdraw from our 
work for the sake of our work. We note how the 
artist at intervals steps back from his canvas, that 
he may gain a broader and juster impression of 
what he is about. Even so it is of the greatest 
importance that the parish priest should occasion- 
ally step back from his task and its immediate 
surroundings. Seen from the distance things 
stand out in truer proportions. Troubles and 
difficulties, for instance, which close at hand fill 
the entire horizon, wear a quite altered aspect 
if looked at from an outside standpoint from 



Depression 153 

which it is possible to measure their real signifi- 
cance, or insignificance, in relation to the work as 
a whole. When, moreover, the withdrawal has 
been combined with something of the nature of a 
Retreat, in which the worker not only steps back 
but rises up and attains to a fresh vision of what 
he and his fellows are doing from the point of 
view of the Master Artist under whom he and 
they are engaged, how delightful the refresh- 
ment may be ; and with what added insight and 
courage and patience he may go down from the 
mount to toil on at the bit of the great design 
with which he has been entrusted. 

Questions of money have not a little to do with 
freedom of mind. It may seem commonplace to 
insist upon the necessity of keeping accounts, and 
of avoiding debt, and of living within the limits 
of income whatever the income may be; yet 
failure in these duties must mean misery, and 
may mean disaster. No men have moi'e cause 
than the clergy to believe in the truth of the pro- 
mise that to those who ' seek first the kingdom ' 
all things necessary for life and for godliness shall 
'be added *"; but neither exegesis nor experience 
affords any grounds for supposing that the fulfil- 
ment of that promise is to be expected where, 



154 Personal Life 

through carelessness, in the ordinary acceptation 
of the word, the common precautions of foresight 
and prudence have been neglected.^ 

It is well that we should have it impressed upon 
us that the disciplined life is the healthy life. 
Great is the peace of those who have trained 
themselves into the love of order and law. Much 
of the feeling of weakness and unsatisfactoriness, 
which is the torment of many, is to be traced to 
nothing else than a want of method and of the 
most ordinary self-control. 

Such are some of the observations which first 
suggest themselves in connection with this subject 
of depression. We enter upon much less sure 
ground when we proceed to deal with the matter 
not so much as a physical failing, or an intel- 
lectual weakness, but as a spiritual temptation. 

There can be no question at all that it is to be 
so regarded and treated. As the danger of secu- 
larisation may be said to have its ultimate source 

^ Speaking of the bearing of Christ's instructions to the 
disciples upon those who are now called to the Christian 
ministry, Professor Harnack says : — * At the very least, it 
ought to be a strict principle with them to concern them- 
selves with property and worldly goods only so far as will 
prevent them being a burden to others, and beyond that to 
renounce them.' — What is Christianity ? p. 96. 



Depression 155 

in the power of the World to lower to its own 
levels the standards and aspirations of the re- 
ligious life ; and as the danger of over-occupation 
can be traced to the desire of the Flesh to sub- 
stitute its own activities for those of the spirit: 
so, on a final analysis, we are driven to the con- 
clusion that the danger of depression derives its 
chief terrors for us from the fact that it is a most 
fatally successful snare of the Devil. 

There is One from whom we draw our thoughts 
of hope : even so there is one principal author of 
discouragement and despair. Many and subtle 
are the devices by which he seeks to entice us 
from the light, that he may fill our souls with 
gloom. If we are to escape them we must stand 
continually on our guard against them. 

Especially are we bound to keep watch ovei 
our thoughts and desires. If we are to be pre- 
served from much misery, we must watch our 
ambitions. The loftier we pitch these the better. 
They can work us nothing but good when they 
rise to the longing that we may attain to our 
best, and be allowed to do something here and 
hereafter to forward the great purposes of God. 
They tend to be mischievous so soon as they 
become bound up with the craving for immediate 



156 Personal Life 

recognition and the desire for a merely personal 
reward. That way lies the possibility of all 
manner of disappointment and vexation. 

Closely allied to the pride of a false ambition 
is the pride of a wrong dependence upon our own 
powers. It has been truly said, and we shall do 
well to ponder the remark, that ' Despondency is 
self-confidence which has failed.' 

Then, too, we must jealously guard our satis- 
factions. Our eyes must be ever unto the hills 
from whence cometh our strength. The heart 
that tries to sustain itself upon human commen- 
dation will discover with bitterness that the de- 
mand will ever increase, while at the same time 
the sense of emptiness will be more and more pain- 
fully felt. ^Whosoever drinketh of this water 
shall thirst again.'' If we are wise, we shall taste 
the cup of human praise with something of fear 
and trembling. There is no more certain cause 
of depression than the accepting of lower satis- 
factions. The higher may seem hard to reach, 
and may at first have less power to stir and in- 
spire the heart, but the effect of them grows with 
experience, and their glow is the glow of health 
and not the flush of excitement. ' At Thy right 
hand there are pleasures for evermore."* 



Depression 157 

Again, if we are to escape unnecessary distress, 
we shall keep most diligent watch upon our criti- 
cisms. We little realise how potent an enemy to 
peace is the habit of judging our brethren. Criti- 
cisms, like curses, ' come home to roost.' The 
critical spirit inevitably grows to be morbidly 
self-conscious and sensitive. So certain is it that, 
' With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured 
to you again."* 

For the rest there is the supreme remedy of 
humble faith in God and patient acceptance of 
His appointment. For the believer in the Cross 
of Christ difficulties may and do remain in the 
world as he sees it. He cannot presume to 
suppose that he possesses the final clue to the 
problem of Infinite Wisdom. He works on in 
the assurance that what he knows not now he 
will know hereafter. If God has not fully shewn 
him His mind, He has done what is better — He 
has shewn him His heart ; for ' There is no sacri- 
fice that God has not made for man ' ! To one 
who believes this difficulties may remain, but 
doubt has gone for ever. 

We can trust Him wholly with His world. We 
can trust Him with ourselves. We are sure that 



158 Personal Life 

He cares far more to make the best of us, and to 
do the most through us, than we have ever cared 
ourselves. He is ever trying to make us under- 
stand that He yearns to be to us more than aught 
in the universe besides. That He really wants 
us, and needs us, is the wonder and strength of 
our life. 

To those with whom these are the chief cer- 
tainties of existence there may indeed come hours 
of darkness and mysterious trial, assaults of the 
evil one, and chastisements for sins that are past : 
but behind all a light is shining from before 
which, sooner or later, the clouds must break and 
the shadows must flee away. 



Note 

No modern treatment of the subject of ministerial 
depression is more full of pathos and suggestive- 
ness than that which is to be found in a sermon 
by F. W. Robertson upon the despondency of 
Elijah {Sermons, ii. pp. 73 f.). Every word 
comes pulsing from the inmost heart of the 
speaker. A few sentences may give an impression 
of its general purport, but it should be carefully 
studied as a whole. 

' We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Of 
that constitution, which in our ignorance we call 
union of soul and body, we know little respecting 
what is cause and what is effect. We would fain 
believe that the mind has power over the body, 
but it is just as true that the body rules the 
mind. Causes apparently the most trivial : a 
heated room — want of exercise — a sunless day — 
a northern aspect — will make all the difference 
between happiness and unhappiness, between faith 
and doubt, between courage and indecision.'' . . . 

' What greater minds like Elijah's have felt in- 
tensely, all we have felt in our own degree. Not 
one of us but what has felt his heart aching for 

1^9 



160 Note 

want of sympathy. We have had our lonely 
hours, our days of disappomtment, and our 
moments of hopelessness — times when our highest 
feelings have been misunderstood, and our purest 
met with ridicule. Days when our heavy secret 
was lying unshared, like ice upon the heart. And 
then the spirit gives way : we have wished that 
all were over — that we could lie down tired, and 
rest like the children, fi'om life — that the hour 
was come when we could put down the extin- 
guisher on the lamp, and feel the last gi^and rush 
of darkness on the spirit." 

After tracing with extraordinary insight the 
Divine treatment of Elijah's case by the adminis- 
tration of ' food, rest, and exercise,' ' by the heal- 
ing influences of Nature,' by ' work to be done,' 
and by ' the assurance of victory,' the preacher 
concludes : — 

' Remember the power of indirect influences : 
those which distil from a life, not from a sudden, 
brilliant effort. The former never fail : the latter 
often. There is good done of which we can never 
predicate the when or where. . . . Get below 
appearances, below glitter and show. Plant your 
foot upon reality. Not in the jubilee of the 
myriads on Carmel, but in the humble silence of 
the hearts of the seven thousand, lay the proof 
that Elijah had not lived in vain/ 



POSTSCRIPT 

No attempt has been made in these pages to 
disguise the fact that the life of the clergy is 
a difficult one. ' Difficulty,' as we saw, is the 
central watchword of the three in the Exhorta- 
tion of the Ordinal. The day has certainly gone, 
if ever there was such a day, when men might 
persuade themselves that by entering into Holy 
Orders they were securing an agreeable and not 
very arduous career. From the clergy more 
than from any other workers is expected self- 
sacrifice in devotion to their work. None of us 
would complain that this is so. We are grateful 
for the support which we receive when those about 
us demand from us that we should be our best. 
We feel that our own standards ought to be 
even higher than theirs for us. 

After all, life in this world is only a choice of 
difficulties. If we avoid them in one direction it 
is but to meet them in another. It will cost us 
much to be true to our vocation, but the penalty 

161 T 



162 Postscript 

will be greater if we are not. It is ' hard to be 
a Christian,' but it is harder not to be ! When 
those who have once seen the vision and ' tasted 
the heavenly gift ' draw back, they invite experi- 
ences compared with which the trials of the saint 
are light and sweet. The really ' hard ' thing is 
to ' kick against the pricks.** ' The way of trans- 
gressors is hard.^ 

We dare not then be daunted by the difficulties 
before us. There is One who knows them all, and 
who is ready to meet them with us. ' Faithful is 
He that calleth, who also will do it.'' What is 
wanted on our part is patience and hope. We 
must ' do the next thing,** set our foot on the 
next round of the ladder, however elementary or 
unattractive the duty may seem. We must re- 
member, as we have said already, that every true 
effort is sure to be repaid. We must be willing 
to learn by our failures. Perhaps most of all, we 
must be resolute in putting from us the ignoble 
and cowardly suggestion, ' If only I might begin 
somewhere else, and make a new start under fi'esh 
conditions, I could be this or the other." Rather 
let us thank God, if we have done badly where 
we are, that He still leaves us the opportunity 



Postscript 163 

of making a reparation before the eyes of those 
who have been wronged by our negligence. 

We can always begin again, if we are humble 
and put our confidence in God. It will not be 
easy, but it is possible. We may not ask for 
more. 



THE END 



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M.A. 



Eucharistic Manual (The). Consisting of Instructions and 
Devotions for the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. From various sources. 
32/wo. cloth gilt, red edges, is. Cheap Edition, limp cloth, gd. 

Farrar.— Works by Frederic W. Farrar, D.D., Dean of 

Canterbury. 

TEXTS EXPLAINED ; or, Helps to Understand the New Testament. 
Crown Svo. ^s. net. 

THE BIBLE : Its Meaning and Supremacy. Zvo. 6j. net. 

Fosbery.— VOICES OF COMFORT. Edited by the Rev. 
Thomas Vincent Fosbery, M.A., sometime Vicar of St. Giles's, 
Reading. Cheap Edition. Small Svo. y. net. 

The Larger Edition {^s. 6d.) may still he had. 

Fuller.— IN TERRA PAX ; or, The Primary Sayings of Our 
Lord during the Great Forty Days in their Relation to the Church. 
Sermons preached at St. Mark's, Marylebone Road. By Morris 
Fuller, B.D. Crown Svo. 6s. net. 

Gardner.— A CATECHISM OF CHURCH HISTORY, from 
the Day of Pentecost until the Present Day. By the Rev. C. E. 
Gardner, of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley. Crown 
SvOf sewed, u. ; cloth, is. 6d, 



8 



A SELECTION OF WORKS 



Geikie.— Works by J. Cunningham Geikie, D.D., LL.D., late 
Vicar of St. Martin -at-Palace, Norwich. 
THE VICAR AND HIS FRIENDS. Crown 8vo. sj. net. 

HOURS WITH THE BIBLE : the Scriptures in the Light of Modern 
Discovery and Knowledge. Complete in Twelve Volumes, Crown Svo. 



OLD TESTAMENT. 



Creation to the Patriarchs. 
With a Map and Illustrations, 5J. 

MosES to Judges. With a Map 
and Illustrations, ^s, 

Samson to Solomon. With a 
Map and Illustrations, 5J 



With 



Rehoboam to Hezekiah. 

Illustrations, ^s. 
Manasseh to Zedekiah. With 

the Contemporary Prophets. With 

a Map and Illustrations, 55. 
Exile to Malachi. With the 

Contemporary Prophets. With 

Illustrations, 55, 



NEW TESTAMENT. 



The Gospels. With a Map and 
Illustrations, 55. 

Life and Words of Christ. 
With Map, 2 vols. 10s, 



Life and Epistles of St. Paul. 

With Maps and Illustrations, 

2 vols, los, 
St. Peter to Revelation. With 

29 Illustrations, 5J. 



LIFE AND WORDS OF CHRIST. 

Cabinet Edition. With Map. 2 vols. Post Svo, los. 
Cheap Edition y without the Notes, i vol, Svo, 6s. 

A SHORT LIFE OF CHRIST. With 34 Illustrations. 
3J. 6d. ; gilt edges, 4s. 6d. 



Crown Svo. 



Gold Dust: a Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sancti- 
fication of Daily Life. Translated and abridged from the French by 
E.L.E.E. Edited by Charlotte M. Yonge. Parts I. II. III. 
Small Pocket Volumes. Cloth, gilt, each i.s. Parts I. and II. in One 
Volume. I J. dd. Parts I., II., and III. in One Volume. 2J. net. 

%* The two first parts in One Volume, large type, iSmo. cloth, gilt, zs, net. 
Parts I. II. and III. are also supplied, bound in white cloth, with red 
edges, in box, price 2s, 6d. net. 

Gore. — Works by the Right Rev. Charles Gore, D.D., Lord 

Bishop of Worcester. 
THE CHURCH AND THE MINISTRY. Ei/th Edition, Revised, 

Crown Svo. 6s. , net, 
ROMAN CATHOLIC CLAIMS. Crown Svo. 3s, net. 



Goreh.— THE LIFE 
Gardner, S.S.J.E. 
son, M.A.,S.S.J.E., 
Crown Svo, 5J. 



OF FATHER GOREH. By C. E. 

Edited, with Preface, by Richard Meux Ben- 
Student of Christ Church, Oxford. With Portrait. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, 



Great Truths of the Christian Religion. Edited by the Rev. 
W. U. Richards. Small 8vo. 2s. 

Hall.— Works by the Right Rev. A. C. A. Hall, D.D., Bishop 
of Vermont. 
CONFIRMATION. Crown Svo. 5J. (The Oxford Library of Practical 

Theology. ) 
THE VIRGIN MOTHER: Retreat Addresses on the Life of the 
Blessed Virgin Mary as told in the Gospels. With an appended 
Essay on the Virgin Birth of our Lord. Crown Svo. 4?. 6d. 
CHRIST'S TEMPTATION AND OURS. Crown Svo, y. 6d. 

Hall.— THE KENOTIC THEORY. Considered with Parti- 
cular Reference to its Anglican Forms and Arguments. By the Rev. 
Francis J. Hall, D.D., Instructor of Dogmatic Theology in the 
Western Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois. Crown Svo. 5^. 

Hallowing of Sorrow. By E. R. With a Preface by H. S. 

Holland, M.A., Canon and Precentor of St. Paul's. Small Svo. zs. 

Hanbury - Tracy. — FAITH AND PROGRESS. Sermons 

Preached at the Dedication Festival of St. Barnabas' Church, Pim- 
lico, June 10-17, 1900. Edited by the Rev. the Hon. A. Hanbury- 
Tracy, Vicar of St. Barnabas', Pimlico. With an Introduction by the 
Rev. T. T. Carter, M.A. Crown Svo. 4^. 6d. net. 

Handbooks for the Clergy. Edited by the Rev. Arthur W. 

Robinson, B.D., Vicar of Allhallows Barking by the Tower. Crown 
Svo. 2S. 6d. net each Volume. 

THE PERSONAL LIFE OF THE CLERGY. By the Rev. Arthur 
W. Robinson, B.D., Vicar of Allhallows Barking by the Tower, 
London, E.C. [Just published. 

PATRISTIC STUDY. By the Rev. H. B. Sv^ete, D.D., Regius Pro- 
fessor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. {^Nearly ready, 

THE MINISTRY OF CONVERSION. By the Rev. A. J. Mason, D.D., 
Lady Margaret's Reader in Divinity in the University of Cambridge 
and Canon of Canterbury. [Nearly ready. 

FOREIGN MISSIONS. By the Right Rev. H. H. Montgomery. D.D.. 
formerly Bishop of Tasmania, Secretary of the Society for the Propaga- 
tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. [In the p7'ess. 
%* Other Volumes are in preparatio?t, 

Harrison.— PROBLEMS OF CHRISTIANITY AND 
SCEPTICISM. By the Rev. Alexander J Harrison, B.D. 
Incumbent of St. Thomas the Martyr, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Crown 
Svo, 7J. 6d, 

Hatch.— THE ORGANIZATION OF THE EARLY 

CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. Being the Bampton Lectures for 1880. 
By Edwin Hatch, M.A., D.D., late Reader in Ecclesiastical History 
in the University of Oxford. Svo. 5^. 
A2 



lo A SELECTION OF WORKS 

Holland.— Works by the Rev. Henry Scott Holland, M.A., 
Canon and Precentor of St. Paul's. 

GOD'S CITY AND THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM. Crown 
Svo. 3J. 6d. 

PLEAS AND CLAIMS FOR CHRIST. Crown Svo. ss. 6d, ' 

CREED AND CHARACTER : Sermons. Crown Svo. 3s, 6d, 

ON BEHALF OF BELIEF. Sermons. Crown Svo. 35. 6d, 

CHRIST OR ECCLESIASTES. Sermons. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. 

LOGIC AND LIFE, with other Sermons. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 

GOOD FRIDAY. Being Addresses on the Seven Last Words. Small 

Svo. 2.S. 

Hollings. — Works by the Rev. G. S. Hollings, Mission Priest of 

the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley, Oxford. 

THE HEAVENLY STAIR ; or, A Ladder of the Love of God for Sinners. 
Crown Svo, 3s. 6d, 

PORTA REGALIS ; or, Considerations on Prayer. Crown Svo. limp cloth, 
IS, 6d. net ; cloth boards, 2s. net. 

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE WISDOM OF GOD. Crown Svo. 4J. 

PARADOXES OF THE LOVE OF GOD, especially as they are seen in 
the way of the Evangelical Counsels. Crown Svo. 4J. 

ONE BORN OF THE SPIRIT ; or, the Unification of our Life in God. 
Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 

Hutchings.— Works by the Yen. W. H. Hutchings, M.A. Arch- 
deacon of Cleveland, Canon of York, Rector of Kirby 
Misperton, and Rural Dean of Malton. 
SERMON SKETCHES from some of the Sunday Lessons throughout 

the Church's Year. Vols. I and II. Crown Svo. 55. each. 
THE LIFE OF PRAYER : a Course of Lectures delivered in All Saints* 

Church, Margaret Street, during Lent. Crown Svo. 4J. 6d. 
THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE HOLY GHOST : a Doctrinal 

and Devotional Treatise. Crown Svo. 4J. 6d. 
SOME ASPECTS OF THE CROSS. Crown Svo. ^. 6d. 
THE MYSTERY OF THE TEMPTATION. Lent Lectures delivered at 
St. Mary Magdalene, Paddington. Crown Svo. 4J. 6d. 

Hutton.— THE SOUL HERE AND HEREAFTER. By the 

Rev. R. E. HuTTON, Chaplain of St. Margaret's, East Grinstead. 
Crown Svo, 6s, 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. ii 

^ • 

Inheritance of the Saints ; or, Thoughts on the Communion 
of Saints and the Life of the World to come. Collected chiefly 
from English Writers by L. P. With a Preface by the Rev. Henry 
Scott Holland, M.A. Ninth Edition. Crown Svo. 75. 6d, 

Jameson.— Works by Mrs. Jameson. 

SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART, containing Legends of the Angels 

and Archangels, the Evangelists, the Apostles. With 19 Etchings and 

187 Woodcuts. 2 vols, Svo. 20s, net. 
LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS, as represented in the 

Fine Arts. With 11 Etchings and 88 Woodcuts. Zvo. los. net. 
LEGENDS OF THE MADONNA, OR BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. 

With 27 Etchings and 165 Woodcuts. Zvo. ioj. net, 
THE HISTORY OF OUR LORD, as exemplified in Works of Art. 

Commenced by the late Mrs. Jameson ; continued and completed by 

Lady Eastlake. With 31 Etchings and 281 Woodcuts. 2 Vols. 

Svo, 20s. net. 

Jennings.— ECCLES I A ANGLICANA. A History of the 

Church of Christ in England from the Earliest to the Present Times. 
By the Rev. Arthur Charles Jennings, M.A. Crown Svo. ys. 6d. 

Johnstone.— SONSHIP : Six Lenten Addresses. By the Rev. 
Verney Lovett Johnstone, M.A., late Assistant Curate of 
Ilfracombe. With an Introduction by the Rev. V. S. S. Coles, 
M.A., Principal of the Pusey House, Oxford. Crown Svo. 2s. 

Jones.— ENGLAND AND THE HOLY SEE: An Essay 
towards Reunion. By John Spencer Jones, M.A., Rector of More- 
ton-in-Marsh. With aPreface by the Right Hon. Viscount Halifax. 
Crown Svo. 6s. net. 

Joy and Strength for the Pilgrim's Day: Selections in 

Prose and Verse. By the Editor of * Daily Strength for Daily Needs,' 
etc. Small Svo. ss. 6d. net. 

Jukes. — Works by Andrew Jukes. 

THE NEW MAN AND THE ETERNAL LIFE. Notes on the 
Reiterated Amens of the Son of God. Crown Svo. 6j. 

THE NAMES OF GOD IN HOLY SCRIPTURE: a Revelation of 
His Nature and Relationships. Crown Svo, 45. td, 

THE TYPES OF GENESIS. Crown Svo. js. dd, 

THE SECOND DEATH AND THE RESTITUTION OF ALL 
THINGS. Crown Svo. 3^. 6d. 

Kelly.— A HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. 
By the Rev. Herbert H. Kelly, M.A., Director of the Society 
of the Sacred Mission, Mildenhall, Suffolk. Vol. I. a.d. 29- 342 
Crown Svo, zs. 6d. net. [ Vol. 2 in the press, 



12 A SELECT/ON OF WORKS 

Knox Little.— Works by W. J. Knox LittlEj M.A., Canon 
Residentiary of Worcester, and Vicar of Hoar Cross. 

HOLY MATRIMONY. Crow?i 8w. 5J. [The Oxford Library of 
Practical Theology.] 

THE PERFECT LIFE : Sermons. Crown ^vo. 7s. 6d. 

THE CHRISTIAN HOME. Crown Svo. 35. 6d. 

CHARACTERISTICS AND MOTIVES OF THE CHRISTIAN 
LIFE. Ten Sermons preached in Manchester Cathedral, in Lent and 
Advent. Crown 8vo. 2s, 6d. 

THE MYSTERY OF THE PASSION OF OUR MOST HOLY 
REDEEMER. Crown Svo. 2J. 6d. 

THE LIGHT OF LIFE. Sermons preached on Various Occasions. 
Crown Svo. 35. 6d. 

SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
Sermons preached for the most part in America. Crown Svo. ^s. 6d. 

Law.— A PRACTICAL TREATISE UPON CHRISTIAN 
PERFECTION. By William Law, M.A. Edited by L. H. M. 
SOULSBY. i6mo, red borders, zs. net. 

Lear.— Works by, and Edited by, H. L. Sidney Lear. 

FOR DAYS AND YEARS. A book containxng a Text, Short Reading, 
and Hymn for Every Day in the Church's Year. i^mo. 2s. net. Also a 
Cheap Edition, yzmo, is,\ or cloth gilt, is. 6d.\ or with red borders, 
2J. net. 

FIVE MINUTES. Daily Readings of Poetry. i6mo, ^s. 6d. Also a 
Cheap Edition, ^^mo. is.\ or cloth gilt, is. 6d. 

WEARINESS. A Book for the Languid and Lonely. Large Type. 
Small Svo. 55. 

CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHIES. Nine Vols, Crown Svo. 3^. 6^. each. 

The Revival of Priestly Life 



Madame Louise de France, 
Daughter of Louis xv., known 
also as the Mother T6r6se de 
St. Augustin. 

A Dominican Artist : a Sketch of 
the Life of the Rev. P6re Besson, 
of the Order of St. Dominic. 

Henri Perreyve. By Pere 
Gratry. 

St. Francis de Sales, Bishop and 
Prince of Geneva. 



IN THE Seventeenth Century 
IN France. 

A Christian Painter of the 
Nineteenth Century. 

Bossuet and his Contempora- 
ries. 

F^nelon, Archbishop of Cam- 

BRAI. 

Henri Dominique Lacordaire. 
{continued. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, 13 

Lear. —Works by, and Edited by, H. L. Sidney Lear.— 
continued, 

DEVOTIONAL WORKS. Edited by H. L. Sidney Lear. New and 
Uniform Editions, Nine Vols. i6mo. 2s. net each. 

The Hidden Life of the Soul. 
The Light of the Conscience. 
Also Cheap Edition, 2>^mo, 6d, 
cloth limp ; is. cloth boards. 
Self- Renunciation. From the 

French. 
St. Francis de Sales' Of the 

Love of God. 
Selections from Pascal's 
'Thoughts.' 



F^nelon's Spiritual Letters to 

Men. 
Fi^NELON's Spiritual Letters to 
Women. 

A Selection from the Spiritual 
Letters of St. Francis de 
Sales. Also Cheap Edition, ^t'^mo, 
6d. cloth limp ; is. cloth boards. 

The Spirit of St. Francis de 
Sales. 



Lepine.— THE MINISTERS OF JESUS CHRIST. By J. 

Foster Lepine, Vicar of Lamorbey, Kent. Parts i. and 11. Crown 
Svo. 5^. each. 

Liddon. — Works by Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L.,LL.D. 

SERMONS ON SOME WORDS OF ST. PAUL. Crown 8m 5^. 

SERMONS PREACHED ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS, 1860-1889. 
Crown Svo. ^s. 

CLERICAL LIFE AND WORK : Sermons. Crown Svo. 5^. 

ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES : Lectures on Buddhism— Lectures on the 
Life of St. Paul — Papers on Dante. Crown Svo. 5J. 

EXPLANATORY ANALYSIS OF PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE 
ROMANS. Svo. I4f. 

EXPLANATORY ANALYSIS OF ST. PAUL'S FIRST EPISTLE 
TO TIMOTHY. Svo. 7s. 6d, 

SERMONS ON OLD TESTAMENT SUBJECTS. Crown Svo. 55. 

SERMONS ON SOME WORDS OF CHRIST. Crown Svo. 55. 

THE DIVINITY OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. 
Being the Bampton Lectures for 1866. Crown Svo. 51. 

ADVENT IN ST. PAUL'S. Crown Svo. 5^. 

CHRISTMASTIDE IN ST. PAUL'S. Crown Svo. ss. 

PASSIONTIDE SERMONS. Crown Svo. 55. 

EASTER IN ST. PAUL'S. Sermons bearing chiefly on the Resurrec- 
tion of our Lord. Two Vols. Crown Svo. 35. 6d. each. Cheap 
Edition in one Volume. Crown Svo, 5J. 

\co7iti7iiced. 



14 A SELECTION OF WORKS 

Liddon.— Works by Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., 
LL. D. — contmued. 

SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF 
OXFORD. Two Vols. Crown 8vo, 3^. 6d. each. Cheap Editio?i in 
one Volume, Crown Svo. 5^. 

THE MAGNIFICAT. Sermons in St. Paul's. Crown Svo, 2s, net. 

SOME ELEMENTS OF RELIGION. Lent Lectures. Small Svo, 
2S, net. [The Crown Svo Edition (^s.) may still be had.] 

SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d, 

Luckock. — Works by Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D., 
Dean of Lichfield. 

THE SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FOUR GOSPELS. 
Crown Svo. 6s. 

AFTER DEATH. An Examination of the Testimony of Primitive 
Times respecting the State of the Faithful Dead, and their Relationship 
to the Living. Crown Svo, y, net. 

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE BETWEEN DEATH AND 
JUDGMENT. Being a Sequel to After Death. Crown Svo. 3s. net. 

FOOTPRINTS OF THE SON OF MAN, as traced by St. Mark. Being 
Eighty Portions for Private Study, Family Reading, and Instruction 
in Church. Crown Svo. 3J. net. 

FOOTPRINTS OF THE APOSTLES, as traced by St. Luke in the 
Acts. Being Sixty Portions for Private Study, and Instruction in 
Church. A Sequel to * Footprints of the Son of Man, as traced by 
St. Mark.' Two Vols. Crown Svo. 12s. 

THE DIVINE LITURGY. Being the Order for Holy Communion, 
Historically, Doctrinally, and Devotionally set forth, in Fifty Portions. 
Crown Svo. 3^. net. 

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON 
PRAYER. The Anglican Reform— The Puritan Innovations— The 
Elizabethan Reaction — The Caroline Settlement. With Appendices. 
Crown Svo, 35. net. 

THE BISHOPS IN THE TOWER. A Record of Stirring Events 
affecting the Church and Nonconformists from the Restoration to the 
Revolution. Crown Svo, 3s. net. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 15 

Lyra Germanica: Hymns for the Sundays and Chief Festivals 

of the Christian Year. First Series. i6mOf with red borders, zs. net. 

MacColL— Works by the Rev. Malcolm MacColl, D.D., Canon 
Residentiary of Ripen. 

THE REFORMATION SETTLEMENT : Examined in the Light of 
History and Law. Tenth Edition, Revised, with a new Preface. 
Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. net. 

CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO SCIENCE AND MORALS. 
Crown Svo. 6s. 

LIFE HERE AND HEREAFTER : Sermons. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. 

Marriage Addresses and Marriage Hymns. By the Bishop of 

London, the Bishop of Rochester, the Bishop of Truro, the Dean 
OF Rochester, the Dean of Norwich, Archdeacon Sinclair, 
Canon Duckworth, Canon Newbolt, Canon Knox Little, 
Canon Rawnsley, the Rev. J. Llewellyn D avies, D. D. , the Rev. 
W. Allen Whitworth, etc. Edited by the Rev. O. P. Wardell- 
Yer BURGH, M. A. , Vicar of the Abbey Church of St. Mary, Tewkesbury. 
Crown Svo. ^s. 

Mason. — Works by A. J. Mason, D.D., Lady Margaret's Reader 

in Divinity in the University of Cambridge and Canon of Canterbury. 
PURGATORY; THE STATE OF THE FAITHFUL DEAD; 

INVOCATION OF SAINTS. Three Lectures. Crown Svo. 3J. 6d. 

net. 
THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL. A Manual of Christian Doctrine. 

Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. Cheap Edition. Crown Svo, y. net. 
THE RELATION OF CONFIRMATION TO BAPTISM. As taught 

in Holy Scripture and the Fathers. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d, 

Maturin.— Works by the Rev. B. W. Maturin. 

SOME PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES OF THE SPIRITUAL 
LIFE. Crown Svo. 4s. 6d. 

PRACTICAL STUDIES ON THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. 

Crown Svo. 5^. 

Medd.— THE PRIEST TO THE ALTAR ; or, Aids to the 
Devout Celebration of Holy Communion, chiefly after the Ancient 
English Use of Sarum. By Peter Goldsmith Medd, M.A., Canon 
of St. Alban's. Fourth Edition, revised and enlarged. Royal Svo. 155. 

Meyrick.— THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH OF 
England on the Holy Communion Restated as a Guide at the Present 
Time. By the Rev. F. Meyrick, M.A. Crown Svo. 45. 6d. 

Monro.— SACRED ALLEGORIES. By Rev. Edward Monro. 

Complete Edition in one Volume, with Illustrations. Crown Svo. 
3^. 6d. net. 



i6 A SELECTION OF WORKS 

Mortimer.— Works by the Rev. A. G. Mortimer, D.D., Rector 

of St. Mark's, Philadelphia. 

THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE: An Historical and Theological 
Investigation of the Sacrificial Conception of the Holy Eucharist in the 
Christian Church. Crown Svo. los. 6d. 

CATHOLIC FAITH AND PRACTICE: A Manual of Theology. Two 
Parts. Crown Svo. Sold Separately. Part i. js. 6d. Part ii. gs. 

JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION : Thirty Addresses for Good 
Friday and Easter. Crown Svo. 5^. 

HELPS TO MEDITATION : Sketches for Every Day in the Year. 
Vol. I. Advent to Trinity. Svo. 7s. 6d. 
Vol. II. Trinity to Advent. Svo. js. 6d. 

STORIES FROM GENESIS : Sermons for Children. CrownSvo. 4^. 

THE LAWS OF HAPPINESS; or, The Beatitudes as teaching our 
Duty to God, Self, and our Neighbour. \Smo. 2s. 

THE LAWS OF PENITENCE : Addresses on the Words of our Lord 
from the Cross. i6mo. is. 6d. 

SERMONS IN MINIATURE FOR EXTEMPORE PREACHERS: 
Sketches for Every Sunday and Holy Day of the Christian Year. 
Crown Svo. 6j. 

NOTES ON THE SEVEN PENITENTIAL PSALMS, chiefly from 
Patristic Sources. Small Svo. 35. 6d. 

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS OF OUR MOST HOLY REDEEMER : 
with Meditations on some Scenes in His Passion. Crown Svo. ^s. 

LEARN OF JESUS CHRIST TO DIE : Addresses on the Words of our 
Lord from the Cross, taken as teaching the way of Preparation for 
Death. 167/10. 2s. 

Mozley.— Works by J. B. MozLEY, D.D., late Canon of Christ 
Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. 
ESSAYS, HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL. Two Vols, Svo, 

EIGHT LECTURES ON MIRACLES. Being the Bampton Lectures 
for 1865. Crown Svo. 35. net. 

RULING IDEAS IN EARLY AGES AND THEIR RELATION 
TO OLD TESTAMENT FA€TH. Svo. 6s. 

SERMONS PREACHED b|^ORE THE UNIVERSITY OF 
OXFORD, and on Various ^casions. Crown Svo. 35. nel, 

SERMONS, PAROCHIAL^r AND OCCASIONAL. Crown Svo. 

3J. nel. i?' 

A REVIEW OF THE B#TISMAL CONTROVERSY. Crown Svo. 

3J. nel. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, 17 

Newbolt.— Works by the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon 
and Chancellor of St. PauPs Cathedral. 

APOSTLES OF THE LORD : being Six Lectures on Pastoral Thee 
logy, delivered in the Divinity School, Cambridge, Lent Term, 1901. 
Crown Bvo, 3^. 6d. net. 

RELIGION. Crown Svo. 55. (The Oxford Library of Practical 

Theology.) 
THE DIAL OF PRAYER : being Devotions for Every Hour. Small 

Svo. 2.S. 
WORDS OF EXHORTATION. Sermons Preached at St. Paul's and 

elsewhere. Crown Svo. ^s. net. 
PENITENCE AND PEACE : being Addresses on the 51st and 23rd 

Psalms. Crown Svo. zs. net, 
PRIESTLY IDEALS ; being a Course of Practical Lectures delivered in 

St. Paul's Cathedral to • Our Society ' and other Clergy, in Lent, 1898. 

Crown Svo. 35. dd. 
THE GOSPEL OF EXPERIENCE ; or, the Witness of Human Life 

to the truth of Revelation. Being the Boyle Lectures for 1895. 

Crown Svo. 55. 
COUNSELS OF FAITH AND PRACTICE: being Sermons preached 

on various occasions. Crown Svo. ^s. 
SPECULUM SACERDOTUM ; or, the Divine Model of the Priestly 

Life. Crown Svo. 75. 6d. 
THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT. Being Ten Addresses bearing on 

the Spiritual Life. Crown Svo, 2s. net. 
THE MAN OF GOD. Small Svo. is. 6d. 
THE PRAYER BOOK : Its Voice and Teaching. Crown Svo. 2J. net. 

Newman.— Works by John Henry Newman, B.D., sometime 
Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford. 

LETTERS AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN HENRY NEW- 
MAN DURING HIS LIFE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH. With 
a brief Autobiography. Edited, at Cardinal Newman's request, by 
Anne Mozley. 2 vols. Crow?i Svo. 7s. 

PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS. Eight Vols. Crown Svo. 
y, 6d. each, 

SELECTION. ADAPTED TO THE SEASONS OF THE ECCLE- 
SIASTICAL YEAR, from the ' Parochial and Plain Sermons.' Crown 
Svo, 3J. 6d. 

FIFTEEN SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY 
OF OXFORD. Crown Svo, y. 6d. 

SERMONS BEARING UPON SUBJECTS OF THE DAY. Crown 
Svo, 35. 6d, 

LECTURES ON THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION. Crown 
Svo, 3J. 6d. 

*»* A Complete List of Cardinal Newman's Works can be had on Application. 



1 8 A SELECTION OF WORKS 

Osborne.— Works by Edward Osborne, Mission Priest of the 
Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley, Oxford. 

THE CHILDREN'S SAVIOUR. Instructions to Children on the Life 
of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Illustrated, i6mo, 2s. net. 

THE SAVIOUR KING. Instructions to Children on Old Testament 
Types and Illustrations of the Life of Christ. Illustrated, i6mo, 2s,nei. 

THE CHILDREN'S FAITH. Instructions to Children on the Apostles' 
Creed. Illustrated, xSrno. zs, net. 

Ottley— ASPECTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT: being the 
Bampton Lectures for 1897. By Robert Lawrence Ottley, M.A., 
Vicar of Winterbourne Bassett, WiUs ; sometime Principal of the 
Pusey House. Zvo. js. 6d. 

Oxford (The) Library of Practical Theology.— Edited by the 

Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon and Chancellor of St. Paul's, 
and the Rev. Darwell Stone, M.A., Principal of the Missionary 
College, Dorchester. Crown Zvo. 51. each. 

RELIGION. By the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Canon and 
Chancellor of St. Paul's. [Ready. 

HOLY BAPTISM. By the Rev. Darwell Stone, M.A., Principal of 
the Missionary College, Dorchester, [Ready. 

CONFIRMATION. By the Right Rev. A. C. A. Hall, D.D., Bishop 
of Vermont. [Ready. 

THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. By 
the Rev. Leighton Pullan, M.A., Fellow of St. John Baptist's 
Oxford. [Ready, 

HOLY MATRIMONY. By the Rev. W. J. Knox Little, M.A., 
Canon of Worcester. [Ready. 

THE INCARNATION. By the Rev. H. V. S. EcK. M.A., St. 
Andrew's, Bethnal Green. [Ready, 

FOREIGN MISSIONS. By the Right Rev. E. T. Churton, D.D., 
formerly Bishop of Nassau. [Ready. 

PRAYER. By the Rev. ARTHUR John Worlledge, M.A., Canon and 
Chancellor of Truro. [In the press, 

SUNDAY. By the Rev. W. B. Trevelyan, M.A., Vicar of St. 
Matthew's, Westminster. * [In preparation, 

THE BIBLE. By the Rev. Darwell Stone, M.A., Joint Editor of 
the Series. [In preparation, 

THE CREEDS. By the Rev. A. G. Mortimer, D.D., Rector of 
St. Mark's, Philadelphia. [In preparation. 

THE CHURCH CATECHISM THE CHRISTIAN'S MANUAL. 
By the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., Joint Editor of the Series. 

[In preparation. 

{continued. 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, 19 

Oxford (The) Library of Practical Theology.— conh'nued. 

RELIGIOUS CEREMONIAL. By the Rev. Walter Howard 

Frere, M.A., of the Community of the Resurrection, Examining 

Chaplain to the Bishop of Rochester. [In preparation. 

INSTITUTIONS OF THE CHURCH. By the Rev. Leighton 

PULLAN, M.A., Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. 

\In preparation 
HOLY ORDERS. By the Rev. A. R. Whitham, M.A., Principal of 

Culham College, Abingdon. \In preparation. 

VISITATION OF THE SICK. By the Rev. E. F. Russell, M.A., 

St. Alban's, Holborn. \In preparation. 

CHURCH WORK. By the Rev. Bernard Reynolds, M.A., 

Prebendary of St. Paul's. \In preparation. 

DEVOTIONAL BOOKS. By the Rev. Charles Bodington, Canon 

and Treasurer of Lichfield. \In preparation . 

Paget.— Works by Francis Paget, D.D., Lord Bishop of Oxford 

STUDIES IN THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER : Sermons. With an 
Introductory Essay. Crown Svo. 4s. net. 

THE SPIRIT OF DISCIPLINE : Sermons. Crown Svo. 4s. net. 

FACULTIES AND DIFFICULTIES FOR BELIEF AND DIS- 
BELIEF. Crown Svo, 4s. net. 

THE HALLOWING OF WORK. Addresses given at Eton, January 
16-18, 1888. Small Svo. 2S, 

THE REDEMPTION OF WAR : Sermons. Crown Svo. 2s. net. 

Passmore.— Works by the Rev. T. H. Passmore, M.A. 

THE THINGS BEYOND THE TOMB IN A CATHOLIC LIGHT. 

Crown Svo. 25. 6d. net, 
LEISURABLE STUDIES. Crown Svo. 4s. net. [Ready. 

Contents. — The 'Religious Woman' — Preachments — Silly Ritual — The Tyr- 
anny of the Word— The Lectern — The Functions of Ceremonial — Homo Creator- 
Concerning the Pun — Proverbia. 

Percival.— THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS. Treated Theo- 
logically and Historically. By Henry R. Percival, M.A., D.D. 

Crown Svo. 5J. 

Pocket Manual of Prayers for the Hours, Etc. With the 

Collects from the Prayer Book. Royal ^zmo. is. 
Powell.— CHORALI A : a Handy-Book for Parochial Precentors 
and Choirmasters. By the Rev. James Baden Powell, M.A. , 
Precentor of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge. Crown Svo, 4s. 6d. net. 

Practical Reflections. By a Clergyman. With Preface by 
H. p. LiDDON, D.D., D.C.L., and the Lord Bishop of Lincoln. 
Crown Svo. 
The Book of Genesis. 4s. 6d. The Minor Prophets. 4s. 6d. 

The Psalms. 5^. The Holy Gospels. 4s. 6d, 

Isaiah. 4s, 6d. Acts to Revelation. 6s. 



20 A SELECTION OP WORKS 

Preparatio ; or, Notes of Preparation for Holy Communion, 
founded on the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for Every Sunday in the 
Year. With Preface by the Rev. George Congreve, S. S. J. E. Crown 
Svo. 6s, net. 

Priest's Prayer Book (The). Containing Private Prayers and 
Intercessions ; Occasional, School, and Parochial Offices ; Offices for 
the Visitation of the Sick, with Notes, Readings, Collects, Hymns, 
Litanies, etc. With a brief Pontifical. By the late Rev. R. F. 
Littledale, LL.D., D.C.L., and Rev. J. Edward Vaux, M.A., 
F.S.A. Post Bvo. 6s. 6d. 

Pullan. — Works by the Rev. Leighton Pullan, M.A., Fellovir 
of St. John Baptist's College. 
LECTURES ON RELIGION. Crown Svo. 6s. 

THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. Crown 
Svo. ss. (The Oxford Library of Practical Theology. ) 

Puller.— THE PRIMITIVE SAINTS AND THE SEE OF 
ROME. By F. W. Puller, of the Society of St. John the Evan- 
gelist, Cowley. With an Introduction by Edward, Lord Bishop of 
Lincoln. Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Svo, i6s. net. 

Pusey.— Works by the Rev. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. 

PRIVATE PRAYERS. With Preface by H. P. Liddon, D.D., 
late Chancellor and Canon of St. Paul's. Royal 2^mo. is, 

SPIRITUAL LETTERS OF EDWARD BOUVERIE PUSEY, 
D.D. Edited and prepared for publication by the Rev. J. O. 
Johnston, M.A., Principal of the Theological College, Cuddesdon ; 
and the Rev. W. C. E. New^bolt, M.A., Canon and Chancellor of St. 
Paul's. Newand cheaper Edition. With Index. Crown Svo. c^s. net. 

Pusey.— THE STORY OF THE LIFE OF DR. PUSEY. 

By the Author of ' Charles Lowder.' With Frontispiece. Crown Svo, 
7J. 6d. net. 

Randolph. — Works by B. W. Randolph, D.D., Principal of the 
Theological College and Hon. Canon of Ely. 

THE EXAMPLE OF THE PASSION: being Addresses given in St. 
Paul's Cathedral at the Mid-Day Service on Monday, Tuesday, Wed- 
nesday, and Thursday in Holy Week, and at the Three Hours' Service * 
on Good Friday, 1897. Small Svo. 2S. net. 

MEDITATIONS ON THE OLD TESTAMENT for Every Day in 

the Year. Crown Svo. 6s. 
THE THRESHOLD OF THE SANCTUARY : being Short Chapters 

on the Inner Preparation for the Priesthood. Crown Svo. y, 6d, 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE, 



21 



Rede.— THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS: A Lost Link in the 
Chain of the Church's Creed. By Wyllys Rede, D.D., Rector of 
the Church of the Incarnation, and Canon of the Cathedral, Atalanta, 
Georgia. With a Preface by Lord Halifax. Crown Svo, 3J. 6d, 

RIVINGTON'S DEVOTIONAL SERIES. 

i6mo, Red Borders and gilt edges. Each 2s. net 



Bickersteth's Yesterday, To- 
day, AND For Ever. Gilt edges. 

Chilcot's Treatise on Evil 
Thoughts. Red edges. 

The Christian Year. Gilt edges, 

Herbert's Poems and Proverbs. 
Gilt edges. 

Kempis' (k) Of the Imitation 
of Christ. Gilt edges. 

Lear's (H. L. Sidney) For Days 
AND Years. Gilt edges. 

Lyra Apostolica. Poems by 
J. W. BOWDEN, R. H. Froude, 
J. Keble, J. H. Newman, 

R. I. WiLBERFORCE, AND I. 

Williams; and a Preface by 
Cardinal Newman. Gilt edges. 
Francis de Sales' (St.) The 
Devout Life. Gilt edges. 



Wilson's The Lord's Supper. 

Red edges. 
♦Taylor's (Jeremy) Holy Living. 
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♦ Holy Dying. 

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Scudamore's Steps to the 
Altar . . Gilt edges 

Lyra Germanica: Hymns for 
the Sundays and Chief 
Festivals of the Christian 
Year. First Series, Gilt edges. 

Law's Treatise on Christian 
Perfection. Edited by L. H. 
M. SOULSBY. Gilt edges, 

Christ and His Cross : Selec- 
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ford's Letters. Edited by 
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* These two in one Volume. 55. 

\%mo^ without Red Borders, Each is. net. 

Steps 



Bickersteth's Yesterday, To- 
day, and For Ever. 

The Christian Year. 

Kempis* (a) Of the Imitation 

of Christ. 
Herbert's Poems and Proverbs. 



to the 



Scudamore's 

Altar. 
Wilson's The Lord's Supper. 
Francis de Sales' (St.) The 

Devout Life. 
♦Taylor's Qeremy) Holy Living. 
* Holy Dying. 



* These two in one Volume. 2S. 6d. 

Eobbins.— AN ESSAY TOWARD FAITH. By Wilford L 
ROBBINS, D.D., Dean of the Cathedral of All Saints', Albany, U.S. 
Small Svo, 35. net. 



Robinson.— STUDIES IN THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST. 

By the Rev. C. H. Robinson, M.A., Canon Missioner of Ripon; 
Reader in Hausa in the University of Cambridge. Crown Svo, 3^. 6d, 



22 A SELECTION OF WORKS 

Romanes.— THOUGHTS ON THE COLLECTS FOR THE 
TRINITY SEASON. By Ethel Romanes, Author of * The Life 
and Letters of George John Romanes. ' With a Preface by the Right 
Rev. the Lord Bishop of London. \?>mo. is. 6d. ; gilt edges, 35. 6^. 

Sanday.— Works by W. Sanday, D.D., LL.D., Lady Margaret 
Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. 

DIFFERENT CONCEPTIONS OF PRIESTHOOD AND SACRI- 
FICE : a Report of a Conference held at Oxford, December 13 and 
14, 1899. Edited by W. SandAY, D.D. 8w. yj. 6^. 

THE CONCEPTION OF PRIESTHOOD IN THE EARLY CHURCH 
AND IN THE CHURCPI OF ENGLAND: Four Sermons. 
Crown Svo, 3J. 6d. 

INSPIRATION : Eight Lectures on the Early History and Origin of 
the Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration. Being the Bampton Lectures 
for 1893. Svo. 7 J. 6d. 

Sanders. — FENELON: HIS FRIENDS AND HIS 

ENEMIES, 1651-1715. By E. K. Sanders. With Portrait. 8vo. 
10s, 6d. net. 

Scudamore.— STEPS TO THE ALTAR: a Manual of Devotion 
for the Blessed Eucharist. By the Rev. W. E. Scudamore, M.A. 
Royal '^zmo. is. 
On toned paper, with red rubrics, 2s.: The same, with Collects, Epistles, and 

Gospels, 2s. 6d. ; iSmo, cloth, is. net; Demy i8mo, cloth, large type^ is. 3^.; 

\(imo, with red borders, 2s. net; Imperial ^imo, liinp cloth, 6d. 

Simpson.— Works by the Rev. W. J. Sparrow Simpson, M.A., 
Vicar of St. Mark's, Regent's Park. 
THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE. Crown Zvo. 3^. 6d. 
THE CLAIMS OF JESUS CHRIST : Lent Lectures. Crown Svo. 3s. 

Songs, The, of Degrees ; or, Gradual Psalms. Interleaved with 

Notes from Neale and Littledale's Commentary on the Psalms. By 
A. B. B. Crown Svo. is. net. 

Stone.— Works by the Rev. Darwell Stone, M.A., Principal 
of Dorchester Missionary College. 

CHRIST AND HUMAN LIFE: Lectures delivered in St. Paul's 
Cathedral in January 1901 ; together with a Sermon on ' The Father- 
hood of God. ' Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. net. 
OUTLINES OF CHRISTIAN DOGMA. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d, 
HOLY BAPTISM. Crown Svo. 55. (The Oxford Library of Practical 
Theology. ) 



IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 23 

Strange.— INSTRUCTIONS ON THE REVELATION OF 

ST. JOHN THE DIVINE: Being an attempt to make this book 
more intelligible to the ordinary reader and so to encourage the study 
of it. By Rev. Cresswell Strange, M.A., Vicar of Edgbaston, and 
Honorary Canon of Worcester. Crown Svo, 6s, 

Strong.— CHRISTIAN ETHICS : being the Bampton Lectures 
for 1895. By Thomas B. Strong, B.D., Dean of Christ Church, 
Oxford. Svo, ys. 6d, 

Stubbs.— ORDINATION ADDRESSES. By the Right Rev. 
W. Stubbs, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Oxford. Edited by the Rev. 
E. E. Holmes, formerly Domestic Chaplain to the Bishop ; Hon. 
Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. With Photogravure Portrait 
Crown Svo, 6s, net. 

Tee.— THE SANCTUARY OF SUFFERING. By Eleanor 

Tee, Author of 'This Everyday Life,' etc. With a Preface by the 
Rev. J. P. F. Davidson, M.A., late Vicar of St. Matthias', Earl's Court. 
Crown Svo. 7J. 6d. 

Waggett.— THE AGE OF DECISION. By P. N. Waggett, 
M.A., of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley St. John, 
Oxford. Cfown Svo. zs. 6d. net. 

Williams.— Works by the Rev. Isaac Williams, B.D. 

A DEVOTIONAL COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL NARRA- 
TIVE. Eight Vols, Crown Svo. 55. each. 

Thoughts on the Study of the Our Lord's MiNiSTRY(SecondYear). 

Holy Gospels. Our Lord's Ministry (Third Year). 

A Harmony qf the Four The Holy Week. 

Evangelists. Our Lord's Passion. 

Our Lord's Nativity. Our Lord's Resurrection. 

FEMALE CHARACTERS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. A Series of 
Sermons. Crown Svo, 55. 

THE CHARACTERS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Crown Svo. 55. 
THE APOCALYPSE. With Notes and Reflections. Crown Svo. SJ. 
SERMONS ON THE EPISTLES AND GOSPELS FOR THE SUN- 
DAYS AND HOLY DAYS. Two Vols. Crown Svo. 55. each. 
PLAIN SERMONS ON CATECHISM. Two Vols, Cr. Svo. 51. each. 

Wilson.— THOUGHTS ON CONFIRMATION. By Rev. R. 
J. Wilson, D.D.. late Warden of Keble College. ■L6mo. is. 6d. 

Wirgman.— Works by A. Theodore Wirgman, D.D., D.C.L., 
Canon of Grahamstown, and Vice-Provost of St. Mary's 
Collegiate Church, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. 
THE DOCTRINE OF CONFIRMATION. Crown Svo, 7s, 6d. 
THE CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS IN THE 
CATHOLIC CHURCH. Crown Svo. 6s. 



24 A SELECT/ON OF THEOLOGICAL WORKS. 

Wordsworth.— Works by Christopher Wordsworth, D.D., 

sometime Bishop of Lincoln. 

THE HOLY BIBLE (the Old Testament). With Notes, Introductions, 
and Index. Imperial 8vo. 

Vol. I. The Pentateuch. 25J. Vol. II. Joshua to Samuel. 15J. 
Vol. III. Kings to Esther. 15J. Vol. IV. Job to Song of 
Solomon. 25J. Vol. V. Isaiah to Ezekiel. 25J. Vol. VI. 
Daniel, Minor Prophets, and Index. 15J. 

Also supplied in 13 Parts. Sold separately. 

THE NEW TESTAMENT, in the Original Greek. With Notes. Intro- 
ductions, and Indices. Imperial Svo. 

Vol. I. Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. 23J. Vol. II. 
Epistles, Apocalypse, and Indices. 37J, 

Also supplied in 4 Parts. Sold separately, 

A CHURCH HISTORY TO A.D. 451. Four Vols. Crown Svo. 
Vol. I. To the Council of Nicea, a.d. 325. 8s. 6d. Vol. II. 
From the Council of Nic^a to that of Constantinople. 
6s. Vol. III. Continuation. 6^. Vol. IV. Conclusion, To 
THE Council of Chalcedon, a.d. 451. 6s. 

THEOPHILUS ANGLICANUS: a Manual of Instruction on the 
Church and the Anglican Branch of it. izmo, zs. 6d. 

ELEMENTS OF INSTRUCTION ON THE CHURCH. ^emo. 
IS. cloth. 6d. sewed. 

THE HOLY YEAR : Original Hymns. i6mo. 2J. 6d. and is. Limp, 6d. 

,, ,, With Music. Edited by W. H. Monk. Square Svo. 4s. 6d. 

ON THE INTERMEDIATE STATE OF THE SOUL AFTER 
DEATH, szmo. is. 

Wordsworth.— Works by John Wordsworth, D.D., Lord 
Bishop of Salisbury. 

THE MINISTRY OF GRACE : Studies in Early Church History, with 

reference to Present Problems. 8vo. 12s. 6d. net. 
THE HOLY COMMUNION: Four Visitation Addresses. 1891. 

Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. 

THE ONE RELIGION : Truth, Holiness, and Peace desired by the 
Nations, and revealed by Jesus Christ. Eight Lectures delivered before 
the University of Oxford in 1881. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d. 

UNIVERSITY SERMONS ON GOSPEL SUBJECTS. Sm. Svo. 2s. 6d. 

PRAYERS FOR USE IN COLLEGE. i6mo. is. 

10,000/1/02. 



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